In the daylight hours Bowen and his helpers worked at their wireless,
and at night they sat in with the light-ship crew. Bowen usually played
checkers in the cabin with the keeper, Nelson, and while they played the
keeper gave him the gossip. He had been nineteen years on Tide Rip Shoal
light-ship, had keeper Nelson.
"No, no things never happen. He blow and she tumble about and her chain
chafe--chafe tarrible sometime. Nineteen year those chain ban chafe so.
One time he blow ten day without stop, but" (he removed his big pipe to
laugh aloud)--"but ten day over and she right dere. Good ol' 67, she ban
right dere. I axpect ol' 67, she be here on Yoodgment Day." Old Nelson
put his pipe back, puffed three times, frowned at the checker-board,
scratched his yellow head, let drop his eyelids and pondered. At about
the time Bowen began to think the keeper must be taking a nap, a long
arm swooped down and moved a black checker one square north-easterly.
Now, if Bowen had been riding to anchor in that one spot with old 67 for
nineteen years, perhaps he, too, would have paid small attention to a
gale of wind and a high sea; but he was a shore-going man, and he grew
very, very weary of the jumping and the rolling, and of the everlasting
rattling and chafing of the iron chains in the iron hawse-holes.
Two chains there were, like double-leashes to a whippet's throat.
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