But
he did not sail for the West Indies that day, nor that week, nor
winter--something'd gone wrong with the machinery. No concern of mine
that. There were those who said later--but that was when my head begun
to trouble me--as it does now sometimes, as I said. There was a time,
when Sarah was alive, before we had even the old ship's cabin on the end
of the old dock by way of an office, when I carried my business in a
wallet in my breast pocket--that is, what we didn't carry in our
heads--but the mother of those two lads, she was with me then. That's
long ago.
A most interestin' man he was. As I say, he made no West India cruise
that winter--the machinery kept gettin' out of order--but he made a few
trips with me--wreckin' trips--for I still looked after the big jobs
myself. There were those who used to say that if I'd only learned to
stand by and look on long enough to train a good man to take my place
in the deep divin', that I'd be goin' yet. Maybe so, but maybe, too,
they didn't know it all. I'd yet to meet a man who would do my work half
as well as I could myself--never but one, and she was a woman and could
do her part better--Sarah, my first wife, and her kind aren't livin'
now.
He was not so soft, this yacht man, as I used to think. He stood the
rough winter trips with me well. I learned to like him--rarely. I could
talk to him about the work, and he'd try to understand--as so few of his
kind would.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25