MRS PATRICK:  (in a thin wild way) I must have my house to myself.

CAPTAIN:  Hell with such a woman!

(Moves the man he is working with and slams the door shut.  As the CAPTAIN says, ’And if there’s any chance of bringing one more back from the dead’, ALLIE MAYO has appeared outside the wide door which gives on to the dunes, a bleak woman, who at first seems little more than a part of the sand before which she stands.  But as she listens to this conflict one suspects in her that peculiar intensity of twisted things which grow in unfavoring places.)

MRS PATRICK:  I—­I don’t want them here!  I must—­

(But suddenly she retreats, and is gone.)

BRADFORD:  Well, I couldn’t say, Allie Mayo, that you work for any too kind-hearted a lady.  What’s the matter with the woman?  Does she want folks to die?  Appears to break her all up to see somebody trying to save a life.  What d’you work for such a fish for?  A crazy fish—­that’s what I call the woman.  I’ve seen her—­day after day—­settin’ over there where the dunes meet the woods, just sittin’ there, lookin’. (suddenly thinking of it) I believe she likes to see the sand slippin’ down on the woods.  Pleases her to see somethin’ gettin’ buried, I guess.

(ALLIE MAYO, who has stepped inside the door and moved half across the room, toward the corridor at the right, is arrested by this last—­stands a moment as if seeing through something, then slowly on, and out.)

BRADFORD:  Some coffee’d taste good.  But coffee, in this house?  Oh, no.  It might make somebody feel better. (opening the door that was slammed shut) Want me now, Capt’n?

CAPTAIN:  No.

BRADFORD:  Oh, that boy’s dead, Capt’n.

CAPTAIN:  (snarling) Dannie Sears was dead, too.  Shut that door.  I don’t want to hear that woman’s voice again, ever.

(Closing the door and sitting on a bench built into that corner between the big sliding door and the room where the CAPTAIN is.)

BRADFORD:  They’re a cheerful pair of women—­livin’ in this cheerful place—­a place that life savers had to turn over to the sand—­huh!  This Patrick woman used to be all right.  She and her husband was summer folks over in town.  They used to picnic over here on the outside.  It was Joe Dyer—­he’s always talkin’ to summer folks—­told ’em the government was goin’ to build the new station and sell this one by sealed bids.  I heard them talkin’ about it.  They was sittin’ right down there on the beach, eatin’ their supper.  They was goin’ to put in a fire-place and they was goin’ to paint it bright colors, and have parties over here—­summer folk notions.  Their bid won it—­who’d want it?—­a buried house you couldn’t move.

TONY:  I see no bright colors.