TH fe 
 
 S"TVflRTPHHP$ 
 
Bp eit^abetl) Stuart pjjclps 
 
 (Mrs. H. D. Ward) 
 
 Fiction 
 THOUGH LIFE US DO PART 
 THE MAN IN THE CASE TRIXY 
 
 THE SUCCESSORS OF MARY THE FIRST 
 Each, illustrated, i2mo, Si 50 
 THE STORY OF AVIS HEDGED IN 
 
 THE SILENT PARTNER 
 Each, i6mo fi 50 
 FRIENDS: A DUET DOCTOR ZAY 
 
 A SINGULAR LIFE DONALD MARCY 
 
 OLD MAIDS AND BURGLARS IN PARADiiE 
 Each, i6mo, $1.25 
 AVERY. Illustrated. 121110, Si 00 
 
 In Collaboration with Herbert D. Ward 
 THE MASTER OF THE MAGICIANS 
 COME FORTH 
 
 Each, i6mo, $1 25. Paper, 50 cents 
 
 Collected Short Stones 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND GHOSTS 
 SEALED ORDERS, AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Each, i6mo, $1.50 
 FOURTEEN TO ONE. i6mo, Si. 25 
 
 Single Short Stories 
 THE MADONNA OF THE TUBS 75 cents 
 JACK THE FISHERMAN. 50 cents 
 LOVELINESS: A STORY. Si 00 
 THE SUPPLY AT SAINT AGATHA'S $100 
 Each, illustrated, square i2mo 
 Religious Works 
 THE GATES AJAR fi.50 
 THE GATES BETWEEN. Si 25 
 BEYOND THE GATES. $1.25 
 
 Each, i6mo, 3 vols , in box, #4.00 
 WITHIN THE GATES. 121110, Si. 25 
 THE STORY OF JESUS CHRIST: AN INTERPRE- 
 TATION. Illustrated, crown Xvo, S2.00 
 
 Popular Edition. Illustrated, 121110, Si 25 
 
 Juveniles 
 THE TROTTY BOOK 
 
 TROTTY'S WEDDING TOUR AND STORY BOOK 
 Each, illustrated, square i6mo, S125 
 Poems 
 POETI.C STUDIES. Square i6mo, $i. 50 
 SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD, AND OTHER 
 POEMS With portrait. i6mo, $1 5 
 Autobiography and Essays 
 CHAPTERS r ROM A LIFE Illustrated. 121110, Si 50 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR IMMORTALITY. i6mo, $1.23 
 WHAT TO WEAR? i6mo. Si 00 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 Boston and New \obk 
 
"They assailed tiif. honor <>i< his home." Pa.^e 30. 
 
JACK THE FISHERMAN 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 C. W. REED 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ®be Rilicrsibc press Cambnbgc 
 
Copyright, 1887, 
 
 By ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS and 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLir & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 

 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "They assailed the honor of his home" Frotitispiece 
 
 Jack's Cradle Title 
 
 Initial Letter . . i 
 
 " I only cried at him " 4 
 
 "He obeyed when he felt like it" 5 
 
 " It was the first time — he was only twelve " 8 
 
 " Upon his other arm he wore a crucifix " II 
 
 " He looked into his old felt hat, and wondered if he were going 
 
 to cry" 14 
 
 "Why, Teen!" 20 
 
 " I '11 be an honest wife to you" 24 
 
 ■" The crumbling cottage " 26 
 
 " Closets and bureaus seemed treasure houses to him "... 27 
 
 " Teen was very happy, to begin with " 28 
 
 " It grew comfortless beside the kitchen fire " 31 
 
 " She held out her arms as she would to one of her children " . 3} 
 
 " So he crouched, listening " 35 
 
 " You 'd better get up, Teen ; it 's cryin' after you "'. . . . .46 
 
 "There's a woman walkin' on the water! " 48 
 
 "Tell me who it was, I say !" 52 
 
 " But he had leaped, and gained on them " 54 
 
 " But no one heard the other words said by Mother Mary " . .56 
 Tail-piece . , 59 
 
 $500121 
 
JACK THE FISHERMAN. 
 
 i. 
 
 WAS a Fairharbor boy. This 
 might be to say any of several 
 things ; but it is at least sure 
 to say one, — he was a fisher- 
 man, and the son of a fisher- 
 man. 
 
 When people of another sort 
 than Jack's have told their 
 earthly story through, the bi- 
 ography, the memorial, the 
 obituary remains. Our poet, preacher, healer, 
 politician, and the rest pass on to this polite 
 sequel which society has ordained for human existence. 
 When Jack dies, he stops. We find the fisherman 
 squeezed into some corner of the accident column : 
 "Washed overboard," or "Lost in the fog," and that 
 is the whole of it. He ends just there. There is no 
 more Jack. No fellow -members in the Society for 
 Something-or-Nothing pass resolutions to his credit and 
 the consolation of his family. No funeral discourse is 
 preached over him and privately printed at the request 
 of the parishioners. The columns of the religious 
 weekly to which he did not subscribe contain no obit- 
 uary sketches signed by the initials of friends not 
 
2 BORN AT SEA. 
 
 thought to be too afflicted to speak a good word fox 
 a dead man. From the press of the neighboring city 
 no thin memorial volume sacred to his virtues and 
 stone-blind to his defects shall ever issue. Jack needs 
 a biographer. Such the writer of this sketch would 
 fain aspire to be. 
 
 Jack was born at sea. His father was bringing his 
 mother home from a visit at a half-sister's in Nova Sco- 
 tia, for Jack's mother was one of those homesick, clan- 
 nish people who pine without their relations as much 
 as some of us pine with them ; and even a half-sister 
 was worth more to her in her fanciful and feeble condi- 
 tion than a whole one is apt to be to bolder souls. 
 
 She had made her visit at her half-sister's, and they 
 had talked over receipts, and compared yeast, and cut out 
 baby things, and turned dresses, and dyed flannel, and 
 gone to prayer-meetings together ; and Jack's mother 
 was coming home, partly because Jack's father came for 
 her, and partly because he happened to come sober, 
 which was a great point, and partly because the schooner 
 had to sail, which was another, — she was coming home, 
 at all events, when a gale struck them. It was an ugly 
 blow. The little two-masted vessel swamped, in short, 
 at midnight of a moonlit night, off the coast, just the 
 other side of seeing Cape Ann light. The crew were 
 picked up by a three-master, and taken home. Aboard 
 the three-master, in fright and chill and storm, the little 
 boy was born. They always put it that he was born in 
 Fairharbor. In fact, he was born rounding Eastern 
 Point. " The toughest place to be horned in, this side 
 o' Torment," Jack's father said. But Jack's mother said 
 nothing at all. 
 
 Jack's father kept sober till he got the mother and the 
 
AN ETERNAL " TEAR." 3 
 
 child safely into the little crumbling, gray cottage in half 
 of whose meagre dimensions the family kept up the 
 illusion which they called home. Then, for truth com- 
 pels me, I must state that Jack's father went straightway 
 out upon what, in even less obscure circles than his, it is 
 customary to call " a tear." There seems to be some- 
 thing in the savage, incisive fitness of this word which 
 has over-ridden all mere distinctions of class or culture, 
 and must ultimately make it a classic in the language. 
 " I 've stood it long as I ken stand, and I 'm goin' on a 
 tear, — I 'm agoin' on a netarnalteax" said Jack's father 
 to his oldest dory-mate, a fellow he had a feeling for, 
 much as you would for an oar you had handled a good 
 many years ; or perhaps a sail that you were used to, 
 and had patched and watched, and knew the cracks in 
 it, and the color of it, and when it was likely to give 
 way, and whereabouts it would hold. 
 
 In fact, that proved to be, in deed and truth, an eter- 
 nal tear for Jack's father. Drunk as a fisherman could 
 be, —and that is saying a good deal, —he reshipped that 
 night, knowing not whither nor why, nor indeed know- 
 ing that the deed was done ; and when he came to him- 
 self he was twelve hours out, on his way to the Banks of 
 Newfoundland ; and the young mother, with her baby 
 on her arm, looked out of the frosty window over the 
 foot of her old bedstead, and watched for him to come, 
 and did not like to tell the neighbors that she was short 
 of fuel. 
 
 She was used to waiting — women are ; Fairharbor 
 women always are. But she had never waited so long 
 before. And when, at the end of her waiting, the old 
 dory-mate came in one night and told her that it hap- 
 pened falling from the mast because he was not sober 
 
4 SHE COULD NOT PRA Y. 
 
 enough to be up there, Jack's mother said she had al- 
 ways expected it. But she had not expected it, all the 
 same. We never expect trouble, we only fear it. And 
 she had put the baby on the edge of the bed and got 
 upon her knees upon the floor, and laid her face on the 
 baby, and tried to say her prayers, — for she was a pious 
 
 little woman, not knowing any better, — but found she 
 could not pray, she cried so. And the old dory-mate 
 told her not to try, but to cry as hard as she could. 
 And she told him he was very kind ; and so she did. 
 For she was fond of her husband although he got 
 drunk; because he got drunk, one is tempted to say. 
 Her heart had gone the way of the hearts of drunkards' 
 wives : she loved in proportion to her misery, and gave 
 on equation with what she lost. All the woman in her 
 mothered her husband when she could no longer wifely 
 worship him. When he died she felt as if she had lost 
 
A RESTLESS BOY. 
 
 5 
 
 her eldest child. So, as I say, she kneeled with her face 
 on the baby, and cried as if she had been the blessedest 
 of wives. Afterward she thought of this with self-re 
 proach. She said one day to the old dory-mate : 
 
 " When my trouble came, I did not pray to God. I 'd 
 ought to have. But I only cried at Him." 
 
 Jack had come into the world in a storm, and he be 
 gan it storm ily. He was a big, roaring baby, and he 
 became a restless boy. 
 His mother's gentle 
 and unmodified fem- 
 ininity was helpless 
 before the problem of 
 this wholly masculine 
 little being. She said 
 Jack needed a man 
 to manage him. He 
 smoked at six ; he 
 lived in the stables 
 and on the wharves 
 at eight ; he came 
 when he got ready, 
 and went when he 
 pleased ; he obeyed when he felt like it, and when he 
 was punished, he kicked. Once, in an imaginative mo- 
 ment, he bit her. 
 
 She sent him to pack mackerel, for they were put to 
 it to keep soul and body together, and he brought home 
 such habits of speech as even the Fairharbor woman 
 had never heard. From her little boy, her baby, — not 
 yet old enough to be out of short trousers, and scarcely 
 out of little sacks, had he been yours, my Lady, at the 
 pretty age when one still fastens lace collars round their 
 
6 NEEDS A MAN TO MANAGE HIM. 
 
 necks, and has them under shelter by dark, and hears 
 their prayers, and challenges the breath of heaven lest 
 it blow too rudely on some delicate forming fibre of soul 
 or body, — from her little boy, at eight years old, the 
 mother first learned the abysses of vulgarity in a seaport 
 town. 
 
 It must be admitted that her education in this respect 
 had been defective. She had always been one of the 
 women in whose presence her neighbors did not speak 
 too carelessly. 
 
 But Jack's mother had the kind of eyes which do not 
 see mire, — the meek, religious, deep-blue eye which 
 even growing sons respect while they strike the tears 
 from it. At his worst Jack regardrd her as a species of 
 sacred fact, much like heaven or a hymn. Sometimes 
 on Sunday nights he stayed at home with her ; he liked 
 to hear her sing. She sang Rock of Ages in her best 
 black alpaca with her work-worn hands crossed upon 
 the gingham apron which she put on to save the dress. 
 
 But ah, she said, Jack needed a man to manage him. 
 And one day when she said this, in spite of her gentle 
 unconsciousness, or because of it, the old dory-mate to 
 whom she said it said he thought so too, and that if she 
 had no objections he would like to be that man. 
 
 And the Fairharbor widow, who had never thought 
 of such a thing, said she did n't know as she had ; for 
 nobody knew, she said, how near to starving they had 
 come ; and it was something to have a sober man. So, 
 on this reasonable basis, Jack acquired a step-father, 
 and his step-father sent him straightway to the Grand 
 Banks. 
 
 He meant it well enough, and perhaps it made no 
 difference in the end. But Jack was a little fellow tO' 
 
AT THE GRAM) BAXKS. J 
 
 go fishing, — only ten. His first voyage was hard: it 
 was a March voyage ; he got badly frostbitten, and the 
 skipper was rough. He was knocked about a good deal, 
 and had the measles by himself in his berth ; and the 
 men said they did n't know they had brought a baby tc 
 the Banks, for they were very busy ; and Jack lay and 
 cried a little, and thought about his mother, and wished 
 he had n't kicked her, but forgot it when he got well. 
 ■So he swaggered about among the men, as a boy does 
 when he is the only one in a crew, and aped their talk, 
 and shared their grog, and did their hard work, and 
 learned their songs, and came home with the early stages 
 of moral ossification as well set in upon his little heart 
 as a ten-year-old heart allows. 
 
 The next voyage did not mend the matter ; nor the 
 next. And though the old dory-mate was an honest fel- 
 low, he had been more successful as a dory-mate than 
 he was as a step-father. He and Jack did not " get on." 
 Sometimes Jack's mother wondered if he had needed a 
 man to manage him ; but she never said so. She was 
 a good wife, and she had fuel enough, now ; she only 
 kissed Jack and said she meant it for the best, and then 
 she went away and sang Rock of Ages to the tune of 
 Martyn, very slow, and quite on the wrong key. It 
 seemed to make her feel better, poor thing. Jack some- 
 times wondered why. 
 
 When he was twelve years old he came home from a 
 winter voyage one night, and got his pay for his share, 
 — boy's pay, yet, for a boy's share ; but bigger than it 
 used to be, — and did not go home first, but went rol- 
 licking off with a crowd of Portuguese. It was a Sun- 
 day night, and his mother was expecting him, for she 
 knew the boat was in. His step-father expected him 
 
8 
 
 SHE EXPECTS HIM. 
 
 too, — and his money ; and Jack knew that. His mother 
 had been sick, but Jack did not know that; she had been 
 very sick, and had asked for him a great deal. There 
 had been a baby, — born dead while its father was off- 
 shore after cod, — and it had been very cold weather ; 
 and something had gone wrong. 
 
 At midnight of that night some one knocked at the 
 door of the crumbling cottage. The step-father opened 
 
 it ; he looked pale and agitated. Some boys were there 
 in a confused group ; they bore what seemed to be a 
 lifeless body on a drag, or bob-sled ; it was Jack, dead 
 drunk. 
 
 It was the first time, — he was only twelve, — and 
 one of the Fairharbor boys took the pipe from his 
 mouth to explain. 
 
BUT SHE DID NOT KNOW. g 
 
 " He was trapped by a Portygee, and they 've stole 
 every cent of him, 'n kicked him out, 'n lef him, 
 stranded like a monk-fish, so me and the other fellers 
 we borryed a sled and brung him home, for we thought 
 his mother 'd rather. He ain't dead, but he's just as 
 drunk as if he was sixty ! " 
 
 The Fairharbor boy mentioned this circumstance with 
 a kind of abnormal pride, as if such superior maturity 
 were a point for a comrade to make note of. But 
 Jack's step-father went out softly, and shut the door, 
 and said : 
 
 " Look here, boys, — help me in with him, will you ? 
 Not that way. His mother 's in there. She died an 
 hour ago." 
 
 II. 
 
 And so the curse of his heredity came upon him. 
 She never knew, thank Heaven. Her knowledge would 
 have been a kind of terrible fore-omniscience, if she 
 had. She would have had no hope of him from that 
 hour. Her experience would have left her no illu- 
 sions. The drunkard's wife would have educated the 
 drunkard's mother too " liberally " for that. She would 
 have taken in the whole scope and detail of the future 
 in one midnight moment's breadth, as a problem in the 
 higher mathematics may rest upon the width of a geo- 
 metrical point. But she did not know. We say — I mean, 
 it is our fashion of saying — that she did not know. 
 God was merciful. She had asked for Jack, it seemed, 
 over and over, but did not complain of him for not com- 
 ing ; she never complained of Jack. She said the poor 
 
IO THEY COULD NOT WAKE HER. 
 
 boy must have stayed somewhere to have a pleasant 
 time ; and she said they were to give her love to him, if 
 he came in while she was asleep. And then she asked 
 her husband to sing Rock of Ages for her, because 
 she did not feel very strong. He could n't sing, — more 
 than a halibut, poor fellow ; but he did not like to dis- 
 appoint her, for he thought she looked what he called 
 " miser'ble " ; so he sat down by the bed and raised his 
 hoarse, weather-beaten voice to the tune of Marty n, as 
 best he could, and mixed up two verses inextricably wi.h 
 a line from " Billy 's on the bright blue sea," which he 
 added because he saw he. must have something to fill 
 out, and it was all he could think of, — but she thanked 
 him very gently, and said he sang quite well ; and said 
 once more that he was to give her love to Jack ; and 
 went to sleep afterward ; and by and by, they could 
 not wake her to see her boy of twelve brought to her 
 drunk. 
 
 The curse of his heredity was upon him. We may 
 blame, we may loathe, we may wonder, we may despair ; 
 but we must not forget. There were enough to blame 
 without remembering. Jack, like all drunkards, soon 
 learned this. In fact, he did not remember it very well 
 himself, — not having been acquainted with his father ; 
 and never sentimentalized over himself nor whined for 
 his bad luck, — but owned up to his sins, with the 
 bluntness of an honest, bad fellow. He was rather an 
 honest fellow, in spite of it all. He never lied when he 
 was sober. 
 
 If the curse of his ancestry had come upon him. its 
 compensatory temperament came too. Jack had the 
 merry heart of the easy drinker. 
 
 Born with his father's alcoholized brain-cells, poor 
 
THE TATTOOED CRUCIFIX. 
 
 II 
 
 baby, endowed with the narcotined conscience which 
 this species of parentage bequeaths, he fell heir to the 
 kind of attractiveness that goes with the legacy. 
 
 He was a happy-go-lucky fellow. Life sat airily on 
 him. He had his mother's handsome eyes dashed with 
 his father's fun (for she could n't take a joke, to save 
 her) ; he told a good story ; he did a kind deed ; he was 
 generous with his money, when he had any, and never 
 in the least disturbed when he had n't. He was popular 
 to the dangerous extent that makes one's vices seem 
 a kind of social introduction, and not in Jack's circle 
 alone, be it said. 
 Every crew wanted 
 him. Drunk or so- 
 ber, as a shipmate 
 he was at par. It 
 was usually easy for 
 him to borrow. The 
 fellows made up his 
 fines for him, there 
 was always some- 
 body to go bail for 
 him when he got 
 before the police 
 court. Arrested per- 
 haps a half dozen 
 times a year, in his 
 
 maddest years, he never was sent to the House in his 
 life. There were always people enough who thought it 
 a pity to let such a good fellow go to prison. He had 
 — I was going to say as a matter of course he had — 
 curly hair. One should not omit to notice that he was 
 splendidly tattooed. He was proud, as seamen are, of 
 
12 ALWAYS REFORMING. 
 
 his brawny arms, dashed from wrist to shoulder with 
 the decorative ingenuity of his class. Jack had aesthetic 
 views of his own, indeed, about his personal allowance 
 of indigo. He had objected to the customary medley 
 of anchors, stars, and crescents, and exhibited a certain 
 reserve of taste, which was rather interesting. On his 
 left arm he bore a very crooked lighthouse rising from 
 a heavy sea ; he was, in fact, quite flooded along the 
 bicipital muscle with waves and billows, but nothing 
 else interfered with the massive proportions of the ef- 
 fect. This was considered a masterly design, and Jack 
 was often called upon to push up his sleeve and explain 
 how he came by the inspiration. 
 
 Upon the other arm he wore a crucifix, ten inches 
 long ; this was touched with blood-red ink ; the dead 
 Christ hung upon it, lean and pitiful. Jack said he took 
 the crucifix against his drowning. It was an uncom- 
 monly large and ornate crucifix. 
 
 Jack was a steady drinker at nineteen. At twenty- 
 five he was what either an inexperienced or a deeply 
 experienced temperance missionary would have called 
 incurable. The intermediate grades would have confi- 
 dently expected to save him. 
 
 Of course he reformed. He would not have been in- 
 teresting if he had not. The unmitigated sot has few 
 attractions even for seafaring society. It is the foil and 
 flash, the by-play and side-light of character, that " lead 
 us on." Jack was always reforming. After that night 
 when he was brought home on the bob-sled, the little 
 boy was as steady and as miserable as he knew how to 
 be for a long time ; he drew the unfortunate inference 
 that the one involved the other. By the time his 
 mother's grave was green with the scanty Fairharbor 
 
THEY TOUCHED HIM GINGERLY. 13 
 
 church-yard grass, — for even the sea-wind seems to 
 have a grudge against the very dead for choosing dry 
 graves in Fairharbor, and scants them in their natural 
 covering, — by that time rank weeds had overgrown the 
 sorrow of the homeless boy. He and his step-father 
 "got on " less than ever now, as was to be expected ; 
 and when one day Jack announced with characteristic 
 candor that he was going to get drunk, if he went to 
 Torment for it, the two parted company ; and the crum- 
 bling cottage knew Jack no more. By and by, when his 
 step-father was drowned at Georges', Jack borrowed the 
 money for some black gloves and a hat-band. He had 
 the reputation of being a polite fellow ; the fishermen 
 spelled it t-o-n-y. Truth to tell, the old dory-mate had 
 wondered sometimes on Sunday afternoons if he had 
 been the man to manage Jack ; and felt that the main 
 object of his second marriage had been defeated. 
 
 Jack, as I say, was always reforming. Every temper- 
 ance society in the city had a hand at him. They were 
 of the old-fashioned, easy type which took their respon- 
 sibilities comfortably. They held him out on a pair of 
 moral tongs, and tried to toast his misdemeanors out of 
 him, before a quick fire of pledges and badges ; and when 
 he tumbled out of the tongs, and asked the president 
 and treasurer why they did n't bow to him in the street 
 when he was drunk, or why, if he was good enough for 
 them in the lodge-room, he was n't good enough to shake 
 hands with before folks on the post-office steps, or pro- 
 pounded any of those ingenious posers with which his 
 kind are in the habit of disturbing the benevolent spirit, 
 they snapped the tongs to, and turned him over to the 
 churches. 
 
 These touched him gingerly. They invited him into 
 
H 
 
 NO WAITS IN THIS PLAY. 
 
 the free pews, — a dismal little row in the gallery, — 
 sent him a tract or two, and asked him a few well-meant 
 and very confusing religious questions, to which Jack's 
 replies were far from satisfactory. One ardent person, 
 a recent convert, coaxed him into a weekly prayer-meet- 
 ing. It was a very good, honest, uninteresting prayer- 
 meeting, and there were people sitting there beside him 
 
 with clean lives and clear faces whose motives Jack was 
 not worthy to understand, and he knew enough to know 
 it. But it happened to be a foreign mission prayer-meet- 
 ing, devoted to the Burmese field ; which was, therefore, 
 be it said, not so much an argument against foreign mis- 
 sions, as a deficient means of grace to the fisherman. 
 Jack was terribly bored. He ran his hands through his 
 curls, and felt for his tobacco, and whispered to tie 
 
"I AIN'T RELIGIOUS. I DRINK." 15 
 
 young convert to know if there were n't any waits in the 
 play so a man could get out without hurting anybody's 
 feelings. But just then the young convert struck up a 
 hymn, and Jack stayed. 
 
 He liked the singing. His restless, handsome face 
 took on a change such as a windy day takes on toward 
 dusk, when the breeze dies clown. When he found 
 they were singing Rock of Ages, he tried to sing it too, 
 — for he was a famous tenor on deck. But when he had 
 sung a line or two, — flash ! down in one of the empty 
 pews in front, he saw a thin old lady with blue eyes, sit- 
 ting in a black alpaca dress with her hands clasped on 
 her gingham apron. 
 
 "That's my mother. Have I got the jim-jams?" 
 asked this unaccustomed worshiper of himself. But 
 then he remembered that he was sober. He could sins: 
 no longer after this, but bowed his head and looked into 
 his old felt hat, and wondered if he were going to cry, 
 or get religion. In point of fact, he did neither of these 
 things, because a very old church-member arose just 
 then, and said he saw a poor castaway in our midst to- 
 night, and he besought the prayers of the meeting for 
 his soul. Jack stopped crying. He looked hard at the 
 old church-member. He knew him ; had always known 
 him. The fisherman waited till that prayer was 
 through, — it was rather a long prayer, — and then he 
 too sprang to his feet. He looked all around the deco- 
 rous place ; his face was white with the swift passion of 
 the drinking man. 
 
 " I never spoke in meetin' in my life," said Jack in an 
 unsteady voice. " I ain't religious. I drink. But I 'm 
 sober to-night, and I 've got something to say to you. I 
 heard what that man said. I know him. He 's old Jim 
 
1 6 HE LIKED THE GIRL. 
 
 Crownoby. I 've always knowed Jim Crownoby. He 
 owns a sight of property in this town. He 's a rich 
 man. He owns that block on Black street. You know 
 he does. You can't deny it. Nor he can't neither. 
 All I want to say is, I 've got drunk in one of them 
 places of his, time and again ; and if there ain't any- 
 body but him to pray for my soul, I 'd rather go to the 
 devil." 
 
 Jack stopped short, jammed on his hat, and left the 
 meeting. In the shocked rustle that followed, some one 
 had the tact to start " Rescue the perishing," as the 
 fisherman strode down the broad aisle. He did not go 
 again. The poor young convert followed him up for a 
 week or two, and gave him an expensive Testament, 
 bought out of an almost invisible personal income, in 
 vain. 
 
 "I've no objections to you," said Jack candidly; 
 " I 'm much obliged to ye for yer politeness, sir. But 
 them churches that sub-leases to a rum-seller, I don't 
 think they onderstand a drinkin' man. Hey ? Well, 
 ain't he their biggest rooster, now ? Don't he do the 
 heft of the payin', and the tallest of their crowin', 
 consequent ? Thought so. Better leave me go, sir. 
 I ain't a pious man ; I 'm a fisherman." 
 
 " Fishes," said Jack, " is no fools." 
 
 He gave voice to this remark one day in Boston, 
 when he was twenty-five years old. He was trying to 
 entertain a Boston girl ; she was not familiar with Fair- 
 harbor or with the scenery of his calling ; he wanted to 
 interest her ; he liked the girl. He had liked a good 
 many girls, it need not be said ; but this one had laid 
 upon the fisherman — she knew not how, he knew not 
 
SHE WAS A PRETTY GIRL. 17 
 
 why, and what man or woman of us could have told 
 him ? — the power that comes not of reason, or of time, 
 or of trying, or of wisdom, or of Tightness, but of the 
 mystery to which, when we are not speaking of Jack, 
 we give the name of love. It seems a sacrilege, admit, 
 to write it here, and of these two. But there, again, it 
 would be easy to be wrong. The study of the relativity 
 of human feeling is a delicate science; it calls for a fine 
 moral equipment. If this were the high-water mark of 
 nature for Jack — and who shall say ? — the tide shall 
 have its sacred clue, even clown among those weeds and 
 in that mud. He liked that girl, among them all, and 
 her he thought of gently. He had known her a long 
 time ; as much as three months. When the vessel came 
 into Boston to sell halibut, he had a few days there, 
 drifting about as seamen do, homeless and reckless ; 
 clashing out the wages just paid off, in ways that some- 
 times he remembered and sometimes he forgot, and that 
 usually left him without a dollar toward his next fine 
 when he should be welcomed by the police court of his 
 native city on returning home. 
 
 Jack thought, I say, gravely of this girl. He never 
 once took her name in vain among the fellows ; and she 
 had not been a very good girl either. But Jack re- 
 flected that he was not very good himself, if you came 
 to that. His downright, honest nature stood him in 
 stead in this moral distinction ; there was always a 
 broad streak of generosity in him at his worst ; it goes 
 with the temperament, we say, and perhaps we say it 
 too often to give him half the credit of it. 
 
 She was a pretty girl, and she was very young. She 
 had told Jack her story, as they strolled about the 
 bright Boston streets on comfortable winter evenings ; 
 
1 8 JACK WAS SOBER. 
 
 when he took her to the variety show, or to the oyster- 
 shop, and they talked together. Jack pitied her. Per- 
 haps she deserved it ; it was a sad little story — and she 
 was so very young ! She had a gentle way, with Jack ; 
 for some reason, God knows why, she had trusted him 
 from the first, and he had never once been known to dis- 
 turb her trust. That was the pleasant part of it. 
 
 On this evening that we speak of, Jack was sober. 
 He was often sober when he had an evening to spend 
 with the Boston girl ; not always — no ; truth must be 
 told. She looked as pretty as was in her that night ; 
 she had black eyes and a kind of yellow hair that Jack 
 had never seen crinkled low on the forehead above black 
 eyes before ; he thought her as fine to look at as any 
 actress he ever saw ; for the stage was Jack's standard 
 of the magnificent, as it is to so many of his sort. The 
 girl's name was Teen. Probably she had been called 
 Christine once, in her country home ; she even told Jack 
 she had been baptized. 
 
 "I wasn't, myself," said Jack; "I roared so, they 
 darse n't do it. My mother got me to church, for she 
 was a pious woman, and I pummeled the parson in the 
 face with both fists, and she said she come away, for she 
 was ashamed of me. She always said that christenin' 
 wasn't never legal. It disappointed her, too. I was an 
 awful baby." 
 
 "I should think likely," said Teen with candor. " Do 
 you set much by your mother ? " 
 
 " She 's dead," said Jack in a subdued voice. Teen 
 looked at him ; she had never heard him speak like 
 that. 
 
 " I 'most wished mine was," said the girl ; "she 'd 'a' 
 ben better off — alonsc of me." 
 
" WHY, TE£Ns" 19 
 
 " That 's so," said Jack. 
 
 The two took a turn in silence up and down the 
 brightly lighted street ; their thoughts looked out 
 strangely from their marred young faces ; they felt as 
 if they were in a foreign country. Jack had meant to 
 ask her to take a drink, but he gave it up ; he could n't, 
 somehow. 
 
 "Was you always a fisherman?" asked Teen, feeling, 
 with a woman's tact, that somebody must change the 
 current of the subject. 
 
 " I was a fisherman three generations back," Jack an- 
 swered her ; " borned a fisherman, you bet ! I could n't 
 'a' ben nothin' else if I 'd drownded for it. It 's a smart 
 business. You hev to keep your wits about you. Fishes 
 is no fools." 
 
 "Ain't they?" asked the girl listlessly. She was 
 conscious of failing in conversational brilliancy ; but the 
 truth was, she could n't get over what they had been 
 saying : it was always unfortunate when she remembered 
 her mother. Jack began to talk to her about his busi- 
 ness again, but Teen did not reply ; and when he looked 
 down at her to see what ailed her, there were real tears 
 rolling over her pretty cheeks. 
 
 " Why, Teen ! " said Jack. 
 
 " Leave go of me, Jack," said Teen, " and let me get 
 off ; I ain't good company to-night. I 've got the dumps. 
 I can't entertain ye, Jack. And, Jack —don't let 's talk 
 about mothers next time, will we ? It spoils the evenin'. 
 Leave go of me, and I '11 go home by my own self. I 'd 
 rather." 
 
 " I won't leave go of you ! " cried Jack with a sudden 
 blazing purpose lighting up all the corners of his soul. 
 It was a white light, not unholy ; it seemed to shine 
 
20 
 
 "MARRY ME?" 
 
 through and through him with a soft glow like a candle 
 on an altar. " I '11 never leave go of you, Teen, if you'H 
 say so. I 'd rather marry you." 
 
 " Marry met" said Teen. 
 
 " Yes, marry you. I 'd a sight rather. There, now 1 
 It 's out with it. What do you say to that, Teen ? " 
 
HE LOOKED VERY KIND. 21 
 
 With one slow finger-tip Teen wiped away the tears 
 that fell for her mother. A ring on her finger glistened 
 in the light as she did this. She saw the sparkle, tore 
 off the ring and dashed it away ; it fell into the mud, 
 and was trodden out of sight instantly. Jack sprang 
 gallantly to pick it up. 
 
 " Don't you touch it ! " cried the girl. She put her 
 bared hand back upon his arm. The ring had left a little 
 mark upon her finger ; she glanced at this, and looked 
 up into Jack's handsome face ; he looked very kind. 
 
 " Jack, clear," said Teen softly, " I ain't fit to marry 
 ye." 
 
 " You 're fitter 'n I be," answered Jack manfully. 
 Teen sighed ; she did not speak at once ; other tears 
 came now, but these were tears for herself and for Jack. 
 Jack felt this, after his fashion ; they gave him singular 
 confusion of mind. 
 
 " I would n't cry about it, Teen. You need n't have 
 me if you don't want to." 
 
 " But I do want to, Jack." 
 
 " Honest ? " 
 
 " Honest it is, Jack." 
 
 " Will ye make a good wife, Teen ? " asked Jack, after 
 some unprecedented thought. 
 
 " I '11 try, Jack." 
 
 " You '11 never go back on me, nohow ? " 
 
 " I ain't that sort ! " cried the girl, drawing herself up 
 a little. A new dignity sat upon her with a certain grace 
 which was beautiful to see. 
 
 " Will you swear it, Teen ? " 
 
 " If you 'd rather, Jack." 
 
 " What '11 you swear by, now ? " asked Jack. " You 
 must swear by all you hold holy." 
 
22 MOTHER MARY. 
 
 " What do I hold holy ? " mused Teen. 
 
 "Will you swear," continued Jack seriously, "will you 
 swear to me by the Rock of Ages ? " 
 
 " What 's that ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " It 's a hymn-tune. I want you to swear me by the 
 Rock of Ages that you '11 be that you say you will, to 
 me. Will you do it, Teen ? " 
 
 " Oh yes," said Teen, " I '11 do it. Where shall we 
 come across one ? " 
 
 " I guess I can find it," Jack replied. " I can find 
 'most anything I set out to." 
 
 So they started out at random, in their reckless 
 fashion, in the great city, to find the Rock of Ages for 
 the asking. 
 
 Jack led his companion hither and yon, peering into 
 churches and vestries and missions, and wherever he 
 saw signs of sacred things. Singing they heard abun- 
 dantly in the gay town ; songs merry, mad, and sad ; 
 but not the song for a girl to swear by, that she would 
 be true wife to a man who trusted her. 
 
 Wandering thus, on the strange errand whose pathos 
 was so far above their own dream or knowledge, they 
 chanced at last upon the place and the little group of 
 people known in that part of Boston as Mother Mary's 
 meeting. 
 
 The girl said she had been there once, but that Mother 
 Mary was too good for her ; she was one of the real 
 kind. Everybody knew Mother Mary and her hus- 
 band ; he was a parson. They were poor folks them- 
 selves, Teen said, and understood poor folks, and did for 
 them all the year round, not clearing out, like rich ones, 
 when it came hot weather, but stood by 'em, Teen said. 
 They kept the little room open, and if you wanted a 
 
ROCK OF AGES. 23 
 
 prayer you went in and got it, just as you 'd call for a 
 drink or a supper ; it was always on hand for you, and 
 a kind word sure to come with it, and you always knew 
 where to go for 'em ; and Mother Mary treated you like 
 folks. She liked her, Teen said. If she 'd been a dif- 
 ferent girl, she 'd have gone there of a cold night all 
 winter. But Teen said she felt ashamed. 
 
 " I guess she '11 have what I 'm after," said Jack. •" She 
 sounds like she would. Let 's go in and see." 
 
 So they went into the quiet place among the praying 
 people, and stood staring, for they felt embarrassed. 
 Mother Mary looked very white and peaceful ; she was 
 a tall, fair woman ; she wore a black dress with white 
 about the bosom ; it was a plain, old dress, much mend- 
 ed. Mother Mary did not look rich, as Teen had said. 
 The room was filled with poor creatures gathered about 
 her like her children, while she talked with them and 
 taught them as she could. She crossed the room im- 
 mediately to where the young man stood, with the girl 
 beside him. 
 
 "We've come," said Jack, "to find the Rock of 
 Ages." He drew Teen's hand through his arm, and 
 held it for a moment ; then, moved by some fine instinct 
 mysterious to himself, he lifted and laid it in Mother 
 Mary's own. 
 
 "Explain it to her, ma'am," he said ; "'tell her, won't 
 you ? I 'm going to marry her, if she '11 have me. I 
 want her to swear by somethin' holy she '11 be a true 
 wife to me. She had n't anything particularly holy her- 
 self, and the holiest thing I know of is the Rock of 
 Ages. I 've heard my mother sing it. She 's dead. 
 We 've been huntin' Boston over to-night after the Rock 
 of Ages." 
 

 "I'll be an honest wifs to you." Page 25. 
 
" THOU MUST SA VE. n 25 
 
 Mother Mary was used to the pathos of her sober 
 work, but the tears sprang now to her large and gentle 
 eyes. She did not speak to Jack, — could not possibly, 
 just then ; but, delaying only for the moment till she 
 could command herself, she flung her rich, maternal 
 voice out upon the words of the. old hymn. Her hus- 
 band joined her, and all the people present swelled the 
 chorus. 
 
 " Rock of Ages, cleft for me ! 
 Let me hide myself in thee ; 
 
 Be of sin the double cure, 
 
 Cleanse me from its guilt and power." 
 
 They sang it all through, — the three verses that every- 
 body knows, — and Jack and Teen stood listening. 
 Jack tried to sing himself ; but Teen hid her face, and 
 cried upon his arm. 
 
 " Thou must save," sang the praying people ; "Thou 
 must save, and thou alone ! " 
 
 The strain died solemnly ; the room was quiet ; the 
 minister yonder began to pray, and all the people bowed 
 their heads. But Mother Mary stood quite still, with the 
 girl's hand trembling in her own. 
 
 " Swear it, Teen ! " Jack bent clown his curly head 
 and whispered ; he would not shame his promised wife 
 before these people. " Swear by that, you '11 be true 
 wife to me ! " 
 
 "I swear it, Jack," sobbed Teen. "If that's the 
 Rock of Ages, I swear by it, though I was to die for it, 
 I'll be an honest wife to you." 
 
 " Come back when you 've got your license," said 
 Mother Mary, smiling through her tears, " and my hus- 
 band will marry you if you want him to." 
 
26 
 
 WILL YOU BE KIND TO ME? 
 
 " We '11 come to-morrow," Jack answered gravely. 
 
 " Jack," said Teen in her pretty way, — for she had a 
 very pretty way, — "if I'man honest wife to you, will 
 you be kind to me ? " She did not ask him to swear 
 it by the Rock of Ages. She took his word for it, poor 
 thins: ! Women do. 
 
 III. 
 
 Mother Mary's husband married them next day at 
 the Mission meeting ; and Mother Mary sat down at the 
 melodeon in the corner of the pleasant place, and played 
 and sang Toplady's great hymn for them, as Jack had 
 asked her. It was his wedding march. He was very 
 sober and gentle, — almost like a better man. Teen 
 thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen. 
 
 " Oh, I say, Teen," he nodded to her, as they walked 
 away, " one thing I forgot to tell you, — I'm reformed." 
 
 " Are you, Jack ? " 
 
 " If I ever drink a drop again, so help me " — But 
 he stopped. 
 
 " So help you, Rock of Ages ? " asked the new-made 
 wife. But Jack winced ; he was honest enough to hesi- 
 tate at this. 
 
HAPPY AND SOBER. 
 
 ^7 
 
 " I don't know 's I 'd darst — that" he added ruefully. 
 " But I 'm reformed. I have lost all hanker for liquor. 
 I shall never drink again. You '11 see, Teen." 
 
 Teen did see, as was to be expected. She saw a 
 great deal, poor thing ! Jack did not drink — for a long 
 time; it was nearly five months, for they kept close 
 count. He took her to Fairharbor, and rented the old 
 half of the crumbling cottage where his mother used to 
 sit and watch for him on long, late evenings. The 
 young wife did the watching now. They planted some 
 cinnamon rose-bushes 
 by the doorsteps of — \ 
 the cottage, and fos- 
 tered them affection- 
 ately. Jack was as 
 happy and sober as 
 possible, to begin 
 with. He picked the 
 cinnamon roses and 
 brought them in for 
 his wife to wear. He 
 was proud to have a 
 home of his own ; he 
 had not expected to ; 
 in fact, he had never 
 had one since that 
 night when his mother 
 
 said they were to give her love to him, if he came home 
 while she was asleep. He had beaten about so, sleeping 
 for the most part in his berth, and sailing again directly ; 
 he had never had any place, he said, to hang his winter 
 clothes in ; closets and bureaus seemed treasure-houses 
 to him, and the kitchen fire a luxury greater than a less 
 
28 YOUNG AND FAIR AND SWEET. 
 
 good-looking man would have deserved. When he came 
 home, drenched and chilly, from a winter voyage, and 
 Teen took the covers off, and the fiery heart of the coals 
 leaped out to greet him, and she stood in the rich color, 
 with her yellow hair, young and fair and sweet as any 
 man's wife could look,«and said she had missed him, and 
 called him her dear husband, Jack even went so far as to 
 
 — » c» 
 
 feel that Teen was the luxury. He treated her accord- 
 ingly ; that was at first. He came straight home to her ; 
 he kept her in flour and fuel ; she had the little things 
 and the gentle words that women need. Teen was very 
 fond of him. This was the first of it, — I was going to 
 say this was the worst of it. All there was of Teen 
 seemed to have gone into her love for Jack. A part of 
 Jack had gone into his love for Teen. Teen was very 
 
IT DID XOT LAST. 29 
 
 happy, to begin with. The respectable neighbors came 
 to see her, and said, " We 're happy to make your ac- 
 quaintance." Nobody knew that it had not always been 
 so that Teen's acquaintance would have been a source of 
 social happiness. And she wrote to her mother that 
 she was married ; and her mother came on to make her 
 a little visit ; and Teen cried her soul out for joy. She 
 was very modest and home-keeping and loving ; no wife 
 in the land was truer than this girl he had chosen was 
 to the fisherman who chose her. Jack knew that. He 
 believed in her. She made him happy ; and therefore 
 she kept him right. 
 
 All this was at first. It did not last. Why should 
 we expect that, when we see how little there is in the 
 relation of man and woman which lasts ? If happy 
 birth and gentle rearing, and the forces of what we call 
 education, and the silken webs of spun refinements, are 
 so strained in the tie which requires two who cannot get 
 away from each other to make each other happy, how 
 should we ask, of the law of chances, the miracle for 
 Teen and Jack ? 
 
 There was no miracle. No transubstantiation of the 
 common bread to holy flesh was wrought upon that poor 
 altar. Their lot went the way of other lots, with the 
 facts of their history dead against them. Trouble came, 
 and poverty, and children, and care, and distaste. Jack 
 took to his old ways, and his wife to the tears that they 
 bring. The children died ; they were poor sickly babies 
 who wailed a little while in her arms, and slipped out 
 because there was n't enough to them to stay. And the 
 gray house was damp. Some said it was diphtheria ; 
 but their mother said it was the will of God. She added : 
 Might his will be done ! On the whole she was not 
 
3° HARD LUCK CAME. 
 
 sorry. Their father struck her when he was in liquor. 
 She thought if the babies lived they might get hurt. A 
 month before the last one was born she showed to 
 Jack's biographer a bruise across her shoulder, long and 
 livid. She buttoned her dress over it with hasty re- 
 pentance. 
 
 " Maybe I 'd ought n't to have told," she said. " But 
 he said he 'd be kind to me." 
 
 Jack was very sorry about this when he was sober. 
 He kissed his wife, and bought a pair of pink kid shoes 
 for the baby ; which it never grew large enough to wear. 
 
 I am not writing a temperance story, only the biogra- 
 phy of a fisherman, and a few words will say better than 
 many how it was. Alcoholized brain-cells being one of 
 the few bequests left to society which the heirs do not 
 dispute, Jack went back to his habits with the ferocity 
 that follows abstinence. Hard luck came. Teen was 
 never much of a housekeeper ; she had left her mother 
 too early ; had never been taught. Things were soggy, 
 and not always clean ; and she was so busy in being 
 struck and scolded, and in bearing and burying babies, 
 that it grew comfortless beside the kitchen fire. The 
 last of the illusions which had taken the name of home 
 within the walls of the crumbling half-cottage withered 
 out of it, just as the cinnamon roses did the summer 
 Jack watered them with whiskey by a little emotional 
 mistake. 
 
 A worse thing had happened too. Some shipmate 
 had " told " in the course of time ; and Teen's pre- 
 matrimonial story got set adrift upon the current — 
 one of the crudest currents of its kind — of Fairharbor 
 gossip. The respectable neighbors made her feel it, as 
 only respectable neighbors do such things. Jack, rag- 
 
SICKNESS AND TROUBLE AND SLACKNESS. 3 1 
 
 ing, overheard her name upon the wharves. Teen had 
 been "that she said she would" to him. He knew it. 
 No matron in the town had kept her life or heart more 
 
 true. In all her sickness and trouble and slackness, and 
 in going cold or hungry, and in her vivid beauty that 
 none or all of these things could quench, Teen had car- 
 ried a sweet dignity of her own as the racer in the old 
 Promethean festival carried the torch while he ran 
 
32 DRUNK AND JEALOUS. 
 
 against the wind. Jack knew, — oh yes, he knew. 
 But he grew sullen, suspicious. When he was drunk 
 he was always jealous ; it began to take that form. 
 When he was sober he still admired his wife ; some- 
 times he went so far as to remember that he loved her. 
 When this happened, Teen dried her eyes, and brushed 
 her yellow hair, and washed up the kitchen floor, and 
 made the coffee, and said to the grocer when she paid 
 for the sugar : 
 
 "My husband has reformed." 
 
 One night Jack came home unexpectedly ; a strange 
 mood sat upon him, which his wife did not find herself 
 able to classify by any of the instant and exquisite per- 
 ceptions which grow, like new faculties, in wives. He 
 had been drinking heavily when he left her, and she had 
 not looked for him for days ; if he sailed as he was, it 
 would be a matter of weeks. Teen went straight to 
 him ; she thought he might be hurt ; she held out her 
 arms as she would to one of her children ; but he met 
 her with a gesture of indifference, and she shrank back. 
 
 "She's here," said Jack. " Mother Mary 's in this 
 d town. I see her." 
 
 "I wish she'd talk to you," said Teen, saying pre- 
 cisely the wrong thing by the fatal instinct which so 
 often possesses drunkards' wives. 
 
 " You do, do you ? " quoth Jack. " Well, I don't. I 
 have n't give her the chance." He crushed on his hat 
 and stole out of the house again. 
 
 But his mood was on him yet ; the difference being 
 that his wife was out of it. He sulked and skulked 
 about the streets alone for a while ; he did not go back 
 to the boys just then, but wandered with the apparent 
 aimlessness in which the most tenacious aims are 
 
AND INDIFFERENT. 
 
 33 
 
 hidden. Mother Mary and her husband were holding 
 sailors' meetings in the roughest quarter of the town. 
 There was need enough of Mother Mary in Fairharbor. 
 A crowd had gathered to hear the novelty. Fairharbor 
 seamen were none too used to being objects of consider- 
 ation ; it was a matter of mark that a parson and a lady 
 
 should hire a room from a rich fish-firm, pay for it out 
 of their own scanty pockets, and invite one in from deck 
 or wharf, in one's oil-clothes or jumper, to hear what a 
 messmate of Jack's called a "high-toned prayer." He 
 meant perhaps to convey the idea that the petition 
 treated the audience politely. 
 
 Jack followed the crowd in the dark, shrinking in its 
 wake, for he was now sober enough not to feel like him- 
 self. He waited till the last of the fellows he knew had 
 
34 MOTHER MARY, TALL AND PALE. 
 
 gone into the place and then crept up on tiptoe, and 
 put his face against the window of the salt-cod ware- 
 house where the little congregation was gathered, and 
 looked in. The room was full and bright. It wore that 
 same look of peace and shelter which he remembered. 
 Mother Mary stood, as she had stood before, tall and 
 pale in her black dress, with the white covering on her 
 bosom. Her husband had been speaking to the fisher- 
 men, and she, as Jack put his gnarled hand to his ex- 
 cited eyes and his eyes to the window -glass, turned 
 her face full about, to start the singing. She seemed 
 to Jack to look at him. Her look was sad. He felt 
 ashamed, and cowered down below the window-sill. 
 But he wanted to hear her sing. — he had never heard 
 anybody sing like Mother Mary, — and so he stayed there 
 for a little while, curled against the fish-house. It be- 
 gan to rain, and he was pretty wet ; but Jack was in his 
 jumper, and a ragged old jumper at that; he knew he 
 was not so handsome as he used to be ; he felt that he 
 cut a poor figure even for a drunken fisherman ; all the 
 self-respect that life had left him shrank from letting 
 Mother Mary see him. Jack would not go in. A con- 
 fused notion came to him, as he crouched against the 
 warehouse, in the showers, that it was just as well it 
 should rain on him ; it might wash him. He pushed up 
 his sleeves and let the rain fall on his arms. He found 
 an old Cape Ann turkey - box there was lying about, 
 turned it edgewise so that one ragged knee might rest 
 upon it, and thus bring his eye to a level with the win- 
 dow-sill, while yet he could not be seen from within. So 
 he crouched listening. The glimmer from the prayer- 
 room came across the fisherman's bared right arm, and 
 struck the crucifix. Jack had the unconscious attitude 
 
SHE SEEMED TO LOOK AT HIM. 
 
 35 
 
 of one sinking, who had thrown up his arms to be saved. 
 The Christ on the crucifix looked starved and sickly. 
 Jack did not notice the crucifix. 
 
 At this moment Mother Mary's yearning voice rang 
 out above the hoarse chorus of the fishermen, whose 
 weather-ragged and reverent faces lifted themselves 
 
36 u i*m reformed:' 
 
 mistily before her, as if they had been the countenance 
 of one helpless man : 
 
 " Rock of Ages, cleft for me ! " 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " cried Jack. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was the next day that some one told Mother Mary, 
 at the poor boarding-house where she stayed, that a 
 woman wanted a few words with her. The visitor was 
 Teen. She was worn and wan and sobbing with excite- 
 ment. Her baby was soon to be born. She did not 
 look as if she had enough to eat. She had come, she 
 said, just to see Mother Mary, just to tell her, for Jack 
 never would tell himself, but she was sure her husband 
 had reformed ; he would never drink again ; he meant to 
 be a sober man ; and Mother Mary ought to know she 
 did it, for she did, God bless her ! 
 
 " I 've walked all this way to bless you for myself," 
 said Teen. " I ain't very fit for walkin', nor I can't af- 
 ford a ferry-ticket, for he didn't leave me nothin' on this 
 trip, but I Ve come to bless you. My husband come to 
 your meetin', Mother Mary, by himself, Jack did. He 
 never goes to no meetin's, — nobody couldn't drove 
 him ; but he come to yours because he says you treat a 
 man like folks, and he would n't go inside, for he 'd ben 
 drinkin' and he felt ashamed. So he set outside upon 
 a box behind the winder and he peeked in. And he said 
 it rained on him while he set peekin', for he wanted to 
 get a look at you. And he come home and told me, 
 for we 'd had some words beforehand, and I was glad to 
 see him. I was settin' there and cryin' when he come. 
 'I wouldn't, Teen,' says he, 'for I've seen Mother 
 
"SO HELP ME MOTHER MARY." 37 
 
 Mary, and I 'm reformed,' says he. So he told me how 
 he set upon the box and peeked. He says you looked 
 straight at him. He says you stood up very tall and 
 kind of white. He says you read something out of a 
 book, and then you sang to him. He says the song you 
 sano- was Rock of Ages, and it made him feel so bad I 
 had to cry to see him. He come in, and he got down 
 on the lounge against our window, and he put his hand 
 acrost his eyes and groaned like he was hurted in an 
 accident. And he says, ' Teen, I wished I was a better 
 man.' And I says, 'Jack, I wished you was.' And 
 he says, ' I lost the hanker when I heard her sing the 
 Rock of Ages, and if I lost the hanker I could swear 
 off.' So I did n't answer him, for if I says, ' do swear 
 off,' he'd just swear on, — they won't, you know, for 
 wives. But I made him a cup of coffee, for I did n't 
 know what else to do, and I brought it to him on the 
 lounge, and he thanked me. ' Teen,' he says, ' I '11 never 
 drink a drop again, so help me Mother Mary ! ' And 
 then he kissed me, — for they don't, you know, after 
 you 've been married. And he 's gone out haddockin', 
 but we parted very kind. And so I come to tell you, 
 for it may n't be many days that I could walk it, and 
 I 've been that to him as I said I should, and I thought 
 you 'd better know." 
 
 "You've had no breakfast," answered Mother Mary, 
 "and you've walked too far. Here, stop at the Holly 
 Tree as you go home ; get a bowl of soup ; and take the 
 ferry back. There, there ! don't cry quite so hard. 
 I '11 try to stay a little longer. I won't leave town till 
 Jack comes in. It takes the Rock of Ages to cure the 
 hanker, Teen. But I 've seen older men than he is 
 stop as if they had been stopped by a lasso thrown from 
 
38 BAD LUCK. 
 
 heaven. If there's any save in him," added Mother 
 Mary below her breath, " he shall have his chance, this 
 time." 
 
 He went aboard sober, and sober he stayed. He kept 
 a good deal by himself and thought of many things. 
 His face paled out and refined, as their faces do, from 
 abstinence ; the ghost of his good looks hovered about 
 him ; he mended up his clothes ; he did a kind turn to a 
 messmate now and then ; he told some excellent clean 
 stories, and raised the spirits of the crew ; he lent a dol- 
 lar to a fellow with the rheumatism who had an indebt- 
 edness to liquidate for St. Galen's Oil. When he had 
 done this, he remembered that he had left his wife 
 
 without money, and said aloud : ''That 's a mean 
 
 trick to play on a woman." 
 
 He had bad luck, however, that trip ; his share was 
 small ; he made seven dollars and twenty-seven cents 
 in three weeks. This was conceded by the crew of 
 the fishing-schooner (her name was the Destiny) to be 
 because Jack had "sworn off." It is a superstition 
 among them. One unfamiliar with the lives of these 
 men will hammer cold iron if he thinks to persuade 
 them that rum and luck do not go together ; or that to 
 "reform" does not imply a reduction of personal in- 
 come. You might as well try to put the fisherman's 
 fist into a Honiton lace jumper, as the fisherman's mind 
 into proportion upon this point. 
 
 Therefore Jack took his poor trip carelessly ; it was 
 to be expected ; he would explain it to Mother Mary 
 when he got in. He drank nothing at all ; and they 
 weighed for home. 
 
 When Jack stepped off the Destiny, at Zephaniah 
 Salt & Co.'s wharf at Fairharbor, after that voyage, 
 
BUT QUITE SOBER. 39 
 
 clean, pale, good-natured, and sober, thinking that he 
 would get shaved before he hurried home to Teen, and 
 wishing he could pay the grocer's bill upon the way, 
 and thinking that, in default of this, he would start an 
 account at the market, and carry her a chop or a sau- 
 sage, in fact, thinking about her with an absorption 
 which resembled consideration, if not affection, — sud- 
 denly he caught her name upon the wharves. 
 
 It may have been said of accident, or of the devil, — 
 God knew ; they may have been too drunk to notice 
 Jack at first, or they may have seen and scented from 
 afar the bad blood they stirred, like the hounds they 
 were. It will never be told. The scandal of these 
 places is incredibly barbarous, but it is less than the bar- 
 barity of drinking men to a man who strikes out from 
 among themselves, and fights for his respectability. 
 
 The words were few, — they are not for us, — but 
 they were enough to do the deed. Jack was quite so- 
 ber. He understood. They assailed the honor of his 
 home, the truth of his wife ; they hurled her past at her 
 and at himself ; they derided the trust which he had in 
 her in his absence ; they sneered at the " reformed 
 man " whose domestic prospects were — as they were ; 
 they exulted over him with the exultation in the sight of 
 the havoc wrought, which is the most inexplicable im- 
 pulse of evil. 
 
 Everybody knew how hot-blooded Jack was ; and 
 when the fury rushed red over his face painted gray by 
 abstinence, there was a smart scattering upon the 
 wharves. 
 
 His hand clapped to his pockets ; but his was an old, 
 cheap, rusty pistol (he had swapped a Bible and his 
 trawls for it once, upon a spree, and got cheated) ; it 
 
40 FIFTEEN OPEN DOORS. 
 
 held but one cartridge, and his wrist shook. The shot 
 went sputtering into the water, and no harm came of it. 
 Jack jammed the pistol back into his pocket ; he glared 
 about him madly, but had his glare for his pains ; the 
 men were afraid of him ; he was alone upon the wharf. 
 
 It can hardly be said that he hesitated. Would that 
 it could. Raving to himself, — head down, hands 
 clenched, feet stumbling like a blind man's, — the fish- 
 erman sank into the first open door he staggered by, as 
 a seiner, pierced by an invisible swordfish, sinks into 
 the sea. He had fifteen such places to pass before 
 he reached his house. His chances were — as such 
 chances go — at best. 
 
 He drank for half an hour — an hour — a half more — 
 came out, and went straight home. 
 
 It was now night of a February day. It had not 
 been a very cold day ; a light, clean snow had fallen, 
 which was thawing gently. Jack, looking dimly on 
 through his craze, saw the light of his half of the gray 
 cottage shining ahead ; he perceived that the frost was 
 melted from the windows. The warm color came 
 quietly down to greet him across the fresh snow ; it had 
 to him in his delirium the look of a woman's eyes when 
 they are true, and lean out of her love to greet a man. 
 He did not put this to himself in these words, but only 
 said : 
 
 "Them lamps look like she used to, — curse her ! " 
 and so went hurtling on. 
 
 He dashed up against the house, as a bowsprit dashes 
 on the rocks, took one mad look through the unfrosted 
 window, below the half-drawn curtain, and flung himself 
 against the door, and in. 
 
 His wife sat there in the great rocking-chair, leaning 
 
JACK AXD JIM. 41 
 
 back ; she had a pillow behind her and her feet on the 
 salt-fish box which he had covered once to make a 
 cricket for her, when they were first married. She 
 looked pale and pretty — very pretty. She was talking 
 to a visitor who sat upon the lounge beside her. It was 
 a man. Now, Jack knew this man well ; it was an old 
 messmate ; he had sworn off, a year ago, and they had 
 gone different ways ; he used to be a rough fellow ; but 
 people said now you would n't know him. 
 
 " I ain't so drunk but I see who you be, Jim," began 
 the husband darkly ; " I '11 settle with you another day. 
 I 've got that to say to my wife I 'd say better if we 
 missed your company. Leave us by ourselves ! " 
 
 " Look here, Jack," Jim flashed good-hum oredly, 
 " you 're drunk, you know. She '11 tell you what I come 
 for. You ask her. Seein' she was n't right smart — 
 and there 's them as says she lacked for victuals, — my 
 wife sent me over with a bowl of cranberry sass, so help 
 me Heaven ! " 
 
 " I '11 kill you some other evenin'. Leave us be ! " 
 cried Jack. 
 
 " We was settin' and talkin' about the Reform Club 
 when you come in," objected Jim, with the patience of 
 an old friend. " We was wonderin' if we could n't get 
 you to sign, Jack. Ask her if we was n't. Come, now ! 
 I would n't make a fool of myself if I was you, Jack. 
 See there. You 've set her to cryin' already. And she 
 ain't right smart." 
 
 " Clear out of my house ! " * thundered Jack. " Leave 
 us be by ourselves ! " 
 
 " I don't know 's I 'd ought to," hesitated Jim. 
 
 * Such peculiarities of Jack's pronunciation as were attributable to his 
 condition will not be reproduced here. 
 
42 "FOR THE LOVE OF MERCY I* 
 
 " Leave us be ! or I won't leave you be a d min- 
 ute longer ! Ain't it my house ? Get out of it ! " 
 
 " It is, that 's a fact," admitted the visitor, looking 
 perplexed ; " but I declare to Jupiter I don't know 's 
 I 'd oughter leave it, the way things look. Have your 
 senses, Jack, my boy ! Have your senses ! She ain't 
 right smart." 
 
 But with this Jack sprang upon him, and the wife 
 cried out between them, for the love of mercy, that mur- 
 der would be done. 
 
 "Leave us be!" she pleaded, sobbing. " Nothin' 
 else won't pacify him. Go, Jim, go, and shut the door, 
 and thank her, for the cranberry sarse was very kind 
 of her, and for my husband's sake don't tell nobody he 
 wasn't kind to me. There. That 's right. There." 
 
 She sank back into the rocking-chair, for she was 
 feeble still, and looked gently up into her husband's 
 face. All the tones of her agitated voice had changed. 
 
 She spoke very low and calmly, as if she gathered her 
 breath for the first stage of a struggle whose nature she 
 solemnly understood. She had grown exceedingly pale. 
 
 "Jack, dear?" softly. 
 
 " I '11 give ye time," he answered with an ominous 
 quiet. "Tell yer story first. Out with it ! " 
 
 "I haven't got nothin' to tell, Jack. He brought 
 the cranberry sarse, for his wife took care of me, and 
 she was very kind. And he set a little, and we was 
 talkin' about the club, just as he says we was. It \s 
 Mother Mary's club, Jack. She 's made Jim secretary, 
 and she wanted you to join, for I told her you 'd re- 
 formed. Oh, Jack, I told her you 'd reformed ! — Jack, 
 Jack ! Oh, Jack ! What are you goin' to do to me ' 
 What makes you look like that ? — Jack, Jack, Jack / " 
 
HE HAS PAST REAS N. 45 
 
 ^:and up here ! " he raved. He was past reason, 
 and she saw it ; he tore off his coat and pushed up his 
 sleeves from his tattooed arms. 
 
 You've plaved me false, I say! I trusted ye. and 
 you ve tricked me. I '11 teach ye to be the talk upon 
 the wharves another time when I get in from George - 
 
 She stood as he bade her, tottered and sank back ; 
 crawled up again, holding by the wooden arm of the 
 rocking-chair, and stretched one hand out to him, feebly. 
 She did not dare to touch him ; if she had clung to him, 
 he would have throttled her. When she saw him roll- 
 ing up his sleeves, her heart stood still. But 
 thought : "I will not show him I m afraid of him. It's 
 the only chance I 've got.'' 
 
 The poor girl looked up once into his face, and 
 thought she smiled. 
 
 -Jack 5 Dear Jack 
 
 • • I *11 teach ye ! I '11 teach y- 
 
 •• Oh. wait a momer.: For the love of Heaven, 
 
 — stop a minute ! I 've been that I said I 'd be to you, 
 since we was married. I ve been an honest wife to you, 
 my boy, and there 's none on earth nor heaven as can 
 look me in the eye and darst to say I have n*t. I swore 
 to ve upon the Rock of A_ces. Mother Man,- witnessin', 
 
 — why, JackJ" her voice sank to infini: s :ness- 
 " have ye forgotten ? You ain't yourself, poor boy. 
 You'll be so sorry. I ain't very strong, yet. — you'd 
 feel bad if you should hit me — again. I 'd hate to 
 have vou feel so bad. Jack dear, don't Go look in the 
 other room, before you strike again. Ye ain't seen it 
 
 Jack, for the love of mercy ! — Tack ! Jack ! 
 "Say you've played me false, and I'll stop. Own 
 up, and I '11 quit. Own up to me. I s 
 
44 "YOU SAID YOU'D BE KIND TO ME/" 
 
 " I can't own up to you, for I swore you by the Rock 
 of Ages ; I swore ye I would be an honest wife. You 
 may pummel me to death, but I '11 not lie away them 
 words I swore to ye . . . by that, . . . Jack, for the love 
 of Heaven, don't ye, Jack ! For the way you used to 
 feel to me, clear, dear Jack ! For the sake of the babies 
 we had, . . . and you walked beside of me, to bury 'em ! 
 Oh, for God's sake . . . Jack ! . . . Oh, you said you 'd 
 be kind to me . . . Oh, ye '11 be so sorry ! For the love 
 of pity ! For the love of God ! Not the pistol ! Oh, 
 for the Rock of " — 
 
 But there he struck her down. The butt end of the 
 weapon was heavy enough to do the deed. He struck, 
 and then flung it away. 
 
 Upon his bared arm, as it came crashing, the crucifix 
 was spattered red. 
 
 V. 
 
 He stood up stupidly and looked about the room. 
 The covers were off the kitchen stove, and the hea/t of 
 the coals blazed out. Her yellow hair had loosened as 
 she fell, and shone upon the floor. 
 
 He remembered that she spoke about the other room, 
 and said of something yonder, that he had n't seen it 
 yet. Confusedly he wondered what it was. He stum- 
 bled in and stared about the bedroom. It was not very 
 light there, and it was some moments before he per- 
 ceived the cradle, standing straight across his way. 
 The child waked as he hit the cradle, and began to cry, 
 stretching out its hands. 
 
 He had forgotten all about the baby. There had 
 been so many. 
 
46 A BITTER VOYAGE. 
 
 " You 'd better get up, Teen," he said as he went 
 out; "it's cryin' after you." 
 
 He shut the door and staggered down the steps.- He 
 hesitated once, and thought he would go back and say 
 to her : 
 
 " What 's the use of layin' there ? " 
 
 But he thought better, or worse, of it, and went his 
 way. He went out and reshipped at once, lingering 
 only long enough to drink madly on the way, at a place 
 he knew, where he was sure to be let alone. The men 
 were afraid of Jack, when he was so far gone under as 
 this. Nobody spoke to him. He went down to Salt 
 Brothers' wharf, opposite Salt & Co.'s, and found the 
 Daredevil, just about to weigh. She was short by one 
 hand, and took him as he was. 
 
 He was surprised to find himself aboard when the 
 next sun went down ; he had turned in his bunk and was 
 overheard to call for Teen, ordering her to do some ser- 
 vice for him, testily enough. 
 
 " Oh," he muttered, " she ain't here, is she ? Be 
 blasted if I ain't on the Daredevil." 
 
 He was good for nothing, for a matter of days, and 
 silent or sullen for the trip. It had been a heavy spree. 
 He fell to, when he came to himself, and fished desper- 
 ately ; his luck turned, and he made money ; he made 
 seventy - five dollars. They were gone three weeks. 
 They had a bitter voyage, for it was March. 
 
 They struck a gale at Georges', and another coming 
 home. It snowed a great deal, and the rigging froze. 
 The crew were uncommonly cold. They kept the stew- 
 ard cooking briskly, and four or five hot meals a clay 
 were not enough to keep one's courage up. They were 
 particular about their cooking, as fishermen are, and 
 
EVEN FOR MARCH AT GEORGES'. 47 
 
 the steward of the Daredevil was famous in his calling. 
 But it was conceded to be unusually cold, even for 
 March, at Georges'. One must keep the blood racing, 
 somehow, for life's sake. 
 
 Whiskey flowed fast between meals. Jack was ob- 
 served not to limit himself. " It was for luck," he said. 
 Take it through, it was a hard trip. The sober men — 
 there were some — looked grim and pinched ; the drink- 
 ers ugly. 
 
 " It 's a hound's life," said a dory-mate of Jack's one 
 day. His name was Rowe — Rowe Salt ; he was a half- 
 brother of Jim's. But Jim was at home. And Teen, 
 of course, was at home. Jack had not spoken of her ; 
 he had thought of her, — he had thought of nothing 
 else. God knows what those thoughts had been. When 
 Rowe spoke to him in this fashion, Jack looked hard at 
 him. 
 
 " I 've been thinkin' ef it disobligated a feller," he 
 said. 
 
 " Hey ? " asked Rowe. 
 
 " If you was treated like folks ; but you ain't. You 're 
 froze. You 're soaked. You 're wrecked. Your nets 
 is stole. You 're drove off in the fog. You 're drown- 
 ded, and you lose your trawls. If you swear off, you 
 miss your luck. It 's dirty aboard. Folks don't like 
 the looks of you. There 's alwers a hanker in the pit o' 
 your stomick. When you get upon a tear you don't 
 know what you — do to — folks." 
 
 Jack stopped himself abruptly, and leaned upon his 
 oar ; they were trawling, and the weather grew thick. 
 
 "Rowe," he said, staring off into the fog, "did ye 
 ever think we was like fishes, us Fairharbor folks ?" 
 
 "I don't know's I hev," said the dory-mate, staring 
 too. 
 
48 "A WOMAN YONDER ON THE WATER!" 
 
 " Well, we be, I think. We live in it and we 're 
 drownded in it, and we can't get out on 't, — we can't 
 get out. We look like 'em, too. I 've thought about 
 that. Some of us look like haddock. You 've got the 
 halibut look yourself. Skipper, he 's got the jib of a 
 monk-fish, — you ken see it for yourself. There's a 
 man I messed with, once, reminded me of a sculpin. I 
 guess I 'd pass for a lobster, myself, — for color, any- 
 how. We take it out someways, each on us. Don't 
 ye know the look the women folks have when they get 
 old and have gone hungry ? You can tell by the build 
 of a boy which way he'll turn out, — halibut way, or 
 
 hake, or mebbe mackerel if he 's sleek and little. It 's a 
 kind of a birth-mark, I should n't wonder. There 's no 
 gettin' out on 't, no more 'n it out of you. Sometimes 
 I used to think — 
 
 " Good Lord ! " cried Jack. He laid down his oar 
 again, and the dory wheeled to starboard sharply. 
 
 " Rowe Salt, you look there ! You tell me if you see 
 a woman yonder, on the water ! " 
 
 " You 've got the jim-jams, Jack. Women folks don't 
 
"WE HAD SOME WORDS:' 49 
 
 walk at Georges'. I can't see nothin' nowhere, but it's 
 thick as " — 
 
 " It's thick as hell," interrupted Jack, "and there's 
 a woman walkin' on the water, — Lord ! don't you see 
 her ? Lord ! her hair is yeller hair, and it 's streamin' 
 over her, — don't you see her ? She 's walkin' on this 
 devilish fog to-wards the dory, — Teen? Teen ! There! 
 Lord save me, Rowe, if I did n't see my wife come 
 walkin' towards us, us settin' in this dory. — Hi-i-igh ! 
 I '11 swear off when I get home. I '11 tell her so. I 
 hate to see such things." 
 
 " You see, Rowe," Jack added presently, — for he had 
 not spoken after that, but had fallen grimly to work. 
 It was ten below, and the wind was taking the backward 
 spring for a bitter blow ; both men, tugging at their 
 trawls through the high and icy sea, were suffering too 
 much to talk, — " ye see we had some words before I 
 come aboard, and she war n't right smart. The baby 
 can't be very old. I don' know how old it is. I was 
 oncommon drunk ; I don't remember what I did to her. 
 I 'm afraid I hit her, — for I had some words with her. 
 I wished I was at home. She won't tell nobody. She 
 never does. But I 'm set to be at home and tell her 
 I 've sworn off. I 've got money for her this trip, too ; 
 I 'm afraid she 's in a hurry for it." 
 
 After this outburst of confidence, Jack seemed to 
 cling to his dory-mate ; he followed him about deck, and 
 looked wistfully at him. Jack had begun to take on the 
 haggard look of the abstainer once again. The crew 
 thought he did not seem like himself. He had stopped 
 drinking, abruptly, after that day in the fog, and suffered 
 heavily from the weather and from exposure. 
 
 " I say, Rowe," he asked one day, " if anything was 
 
50 THE DESTINY AND THE DAREDEVIL. 
 
 to happen, would you jest step in and tell my wife I 
 did n't believe that yarn about her ? She'll know." 
 
 Now it befell, that when they were rounding Eastern 
 Point, and not till then, they bespoke the Destiny, which 
 was outward bound, and signaled them. She drew to 
 speaking distance, and her skipper had a word with the 
 master of the Daredevil, but he spoke none too loud, 
 and made his errand quickly, and veered to his own 
 course, and the two boats parted company, and the Dare- 
 devil came bustling in. They were almost home. 
 
 It was remembered afterward that Jack was badly 
 frostbitten upon that voyage ; he looked badly ; he had 
 strange ways ; the men did not know exactly how to 
 take him. He was overheard to say : 
 
 " /ain't agoin' to go to Georges' again." 
 
 Rowe Salt overheard this, after the skipper of the 
 Destiny had signaled and tacked. Jack was sitting aft 
 alone, when he said it, looking seaward. He had paid 
 little or no attention to the incident of the Destiny, but 
 sat staring, plunged in some mood of his own which 
 seemed as solitary, as removed from his kind and from 
 their comprehension, as the moods of mental disorder 
 are from the sane. 
 
 So then, with such dexterity as the ignorant man 
 could muster, Salt got his friend down below, on some 
 pretext, and stood looking at him helplessly. 
 
 "You don't look well, Rowe," Jack suggested pleas- 
 antly. 
 
 " Jack," said his dory-mate, turning white enough, 
 '■' I '11 make no bones of it, nor mince nothin', for some- 
 body 's got to tell ye, and they said it must be me. 
 There 's a warrant after ye. The sheriff's on the tug 
 betwixt us and the wharf. She \s layin' off of the island, 
 him aboard of her." 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 5 I 
 
 "I never was in prison," faltered Jack. "The boys 
 have always bailed me." 
 
 "T ain't a bailin' matter, Jack, this time." 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " I said it was n't a bailin' business. Somebody 's 
 got to tell you." 
 
 Jack gazed confidingly up into his friend's face. 
 
 "What was it that I done, old boy? Can't ye tell 
 
 me?" 
 
 " Let the sheriff tell you. Ask the sheriff. I 'd 
 rather it was the sheriff told you, Jack." 
 
 " Tell me what it is I done, Rowe Salt ; I 'd tell you." 
 He looked puzzled. 
 
 " The sheriff knows more about it nor I do," begged 
 the fisherman ; " don't make an old messmate tell you." 
 
 "All right," said Jack, turning away. He had now 
 grown very quiet. He pleaded no more, only to mutter 
 once : 
 
 " I 'd rather heard it from a messmate." 
 
 Rowe Salt took a step or two, turned, stopped, stirred, 
 and turned again. 
 
 "You killed somebody, then, if you will know." 
 
 " Killed somebody ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I was drunk and killed somebody ? " 
 
 " Lord help you, yes." 
 
 " I hope," hoarsely — " Look here, Salt. I hope Teen 
 wont know. 
 
 "I say, Rowe," after a long pause, "who was it that 
 I killed?" 
 
 "Ask the sheriff." 
 
 "Who was it that I killed ?" 
 
 "The skipper '11 tell you, mebby. I won't. No, I 
 
52 "TELL ME WHO IT WAS.'" 
 
 vow I won't. Let me go. I 've done my share of this. 
 Let me up on deck ! I want the air ! " 
 
 "I won't let you up on deck— so help me! — till you 
 tell!" 
 
 " Let me off, Jack, let me off ! " 
 
 " Tell me who it was, I say ! " 
 
 "Lord in heaven, the poor devil don't know, — he 
 really don't." 
 
ROUNDING EASTERN POINT. 53 
 
 " I thought you would ha' told me, Rowe," said Jack 
 with a smile, — his old winning smile, that had capti- 
 vated his messmates all his life. 
 
 " I will tell you ! " cried Rowe Salt with an oath of 
 agony. " You killed your wife ! You murdered her. 
 She 's dead Teen ain't to home. She 's dead." 
 
 VI. 
 
 They made way for him at this side and at that, for 
 he sprang up the gangway, and dashed among them. 
 When he saw them all together, and how they looked at 
 him, he stopped. A change seemed to strike his pur- 
 pose, be it what it might. 
 
 " Boys," said Jack, looking all about, " ye won't have 
 to go no bail for me. I '11 bide my account, this time." 
 
 He parted from them, for they let him do the thing 
 he would, and got himself alone into the bows, and there 
 he sank down, crouching, and no one spoke to him. 
 
 The Daredevil rounded Eastern Point, and down the 
 shining harbor, all sails set, came gayly in. They were 
 almost home. 
 
 Straightway there started out upon the winter sea a 
 strong, sweet tenor, like a cry. It was Jack's voice, — 
 everybody knew it. He stood by himself in the bows, 
 back to them, singing like an angel or a madman, — 
 >.cme said this ; some said the other, — 
 
 " Rock of Ages, cleft for me ! 
 Let me hide myself in thee ; . . . 
 
 Thou must save, and thou alone . . . 
 
 When I soar to worlds unknown, 
 See thee on thy judgment throne," — 
 
 sang Jack. 
 
54 
 
 THE LAST HAVEN, 
 
 With the ceasing of his voice, they divined how it 
 was, by one instinct, and every man sprang to him. 
 But he had leaped and gained on them. 
 
 The waters of Fairharbor seemed themselves to leap 
 to greet him as he went down. These that had borne 
 him and ruined him buried him as if they loved him. 
 
A BAPTISM. 55 
 
 He had pushed up his sleeves for the spring, hard to the 
 shoulder, like a man who would wrestle at odds. 
 
 As he sank, one bared arm, thrust above the crest of 
 the long wave, lifted itself toward the sky. It was his 
 right arm, on which the crucifix was stamped. 
 
 VII. 
 
 White and gold as the lips and heart of a. lily, the 
 day blossomed at Fairharbor one June Sunday, when 
 these things were as a tale that is told. It was a warm 
 day, sweet and still. There was no wind, no fog. The 
 harbor wore her innocent face. She has one ; who can 
 help believing in it, to see it ? The waves stretched 
 themselves upon the beach as if they had been hands 
 laid out in benediction ; and the colors of the sky were 
 like the expression of a strong and solemn countenance. 
 
 So thought Mother Mary, standing by her husband's 
 side that day, and looking off from the little creature in 
 her arms to the faces of the fishermen gathered there • 
 about her for the service. It was an open-air service, held 
 upon the beach, where the people she had served and 
 loved could freely come to her — and would. They had 
 sought the scene in large numbers. The summer peo- 
 ple, too, strolled down, distant and different, and hung 
 upon the edges of the group. They had a civil welcome, 
 but no more. This was a fisherman's affair ; nobody 
 needed them ; Mother Mary did not belong to them. 
 
 " The meetin 's ours," said Rowe Salt. " It 's us she 's 
 after. The boarders ain't of no account to her." 
 
 His brother Jim was there with Rowe, and Jim's wife, 
 and some of the respectable women neighbors. The 
 skipper of the Daredevil was there, and so were many 
 
"But no one heard the other words, said BY Mother Marv." 
 Page 58. 
 
IN AN UNKNOWN TONGUE, 57 
 
 of Jack's old messmates. When it was understood that 
 Mother Mary had adopted Jack's baby, the news had 
 run like rising tide, from wharf to wharf, from deck to 
 deck, — everybody knew it, by this time. Almost every- 
 body was there, to see the baptism. The Fairharbor 
 fishermen were alert to the honor of their guild. They 
 turned out in force to explain matters, sensitive to show 
 their best. They would have it understood that one 
 may have one's faults, but one does not, therefore, mur- 
 der one's wife. 
 
 The scene in the annals and the legends of Fairharbor 
 was memorable, and will be long. It was as strange to 
 the seamen as a leaf thrown over from the pages of the 
 Book of Life, inscribed in an unknown tongue of which 
 they only knew that it was the tongue of love. Whether 
 it spoke as of men or of angels, they would have been 
 perplexed to say. 
 
 Into her childless life, its poverty, its struggles, its 
 sacrifices, and its blessed hope, Mother Mary's great 
 heart took the baby as she took a man's own better na- 
 ture for him ; that which lay so puny and so orphaned in 
 those wild lives of theirs, an infant in her hands. 
 
 Jack's baby, Jack's baby and Teen's, as if it had been 
 anybody's else baby, was to be baptized "like folks." 
 Jack's baby, poor little devil, was to have his chance. 
 
 The men talked it over gravely ; it affected them with 
 a respect one would not anticipate, who did not know 
 them. They had their Sunday clothes on. They were 
 all clean. They had a quiet look. One fellow who had 
 taken a little too much ventured down upon the beach ; 
 but he was hustled away from the christening, and 
 clucked in the cove, and hung upon the rocks to dry. 
 One must be sober who helped to baptize that baby. 
 
58 IT WAS A TRUST 
 
 This was quite understood. 
 
 They sang the hymn, Jack's hymn and Teen's : of 
 course they sang the Rock of Ages ; and Mother Mary's 
 husband read " the chapter " to them, as he was used, 
 and spoke to them ; and it was so still among them 
 thaf they could hear each wave of the placid sea beat 
 evenly as if they listened to the beating of a near and 
 mighty peaceful heart. Mother Mary spoke with them 
 herself a little. She told them how she took the child, in 
 despair of the past, in hope of the future ; in pain and in 
 pity, and in love ; yearning over him, and his, and those 
 who were of their inheritance, and fate, their chances, 
 and their sorrows, and their sins. She told them of the 
 child's pure heart within us all, which needs only to be 
 mothered to be saved ; which needs only that we foster 
 it, to form it ; which needs that we treat it as we do 
 other weak and helpless things, whether in ourselves or 
 in another. What was noble in them all, she said, was 
 to them like this little thing, to her. It was a trust. 
 She gave it to them, so she said, as she took the baby, 
 here before their witnessing, to spare him from their 
 miseries, if she might. 
 
 They were touched by this, or they seemed to be ; 
 for they listened from their souls. 
 
 " We 'd oughter take off our hats," somebody whis- 
 pered. So they stood uncovered before the minister, 
 and Mother Mary, and Jack's poor baby. The sacred 
 drops flashed in the white air. Dreamily the fishermen 
 heard the sacred words : 
 
 " In the name of the Father : And of the Son : And 
 of the Holy Ghost. Amen." 
 
 But no one heard the other words, said by Mother 
 Mary close and low, when she received the child into 
 her arms again, and bowed her face above it : — 
 
AM EX. 
 
 59 
 
 11 My son, I take thee for the sake and for the love of 
 thy father ; and of thy mother. Be tJwn their holy ghost." 
 
 But the fishermen, used not to understand her, but 
 only to her understanding them, perceiving that she 
 was at prayer, they knew not why, asking of Heaven 
 they knew not what, — the fishermen said: 
 
 Amen, Amen. 
 
V-UJJJQJl JUU I 
 
 M500121