“I dunno.  We jist work ahead at what’s got to be done.  I know Van Note saved my life.  The way of it was this.  It was the time the Clara Brookman went down:  you mind the Clara Brookman, cap’n?  She was homeward bound after a long cruise—­three year—­and she struck the bar just below, a mile or two.  It was a swashin’ sea an’ a black night.  Our surfboat was overturned with thirteen aboard:  ’leven of us was picked up by the other boat.  The men, they stood in the starn an’ hauled us aboard by main force—­lifted us clear out of the water.  Van Note’s a tremendous musc’lar fellar, he is.  He caught me by the wrist jest as I was goin’ down for the last time:  I’m not a small fish, either,” slapping his brawny thigh.  “Yes, sir.  Van Note and I never mixed much together afore or sence.  But he did that for me:  I don’t deny it.”

“You remember some terrible scenes of suffering no doubt, Jacob?”

“Well, I’ve seen vessels pretty well smashed up, sir.  There was the Alabama, coast-schooner:  all the crew went down on her in full sight; and the Annandale:  she was a coal-brig, and she run aground on a December night.  It was a terrible storm:  but one surfboat got out to her.  They took off what they could—­the women and part of the crew.  I was a boy then, and I mind seein’ them come ashore, their beards and clothes frozen stiff.  After the boat left, some of the crew jumped into the sea, but they couldn’t live in it two minutes.  It was nigh dawn when the boat got out to the brig agen, and there wasn’t a livin’ soul aboard of her; only the body of the mate lashed tight to the mainmast, a solid mass of ice.  He couldn’t be got down, and I’ve heerd my father say it was awful to see him, with one hand held out as if p’intin’ to shore, rockin’ to and fro there overhead till the brig went under.  Months after, some of the bodies of the crew was thrown up by the tide; they was as fresh as if they’d jest gone to sleep.”

“How could that be?  Where had they been?”

“Sucked into the sand.  Them heavy nothe-easters always throws up a bar, an’ they was sucked under it.  When the bar give way the tide threw them up.  But as soon as the air tetched them they began to moulder.”

There was a short silence.  The evening was gathering fast, cold and threatening, the little fire threw our shadows high up on the wall, and the wail of the wind and thunder of the incoming tide gave a ghastly significance to this matter-of-fact catalogue of horrors.  As we looked through the little window at the vast gray plain of water, it seemed as if every wave covered a wreck or dead men’s bones.

“Now, George Johnson,” continued Jacob, “he was the first man as saw the John Minturn come ashore.  That was the worst storm I ever seen on this coast.—­You mind it, cap’n?”

The captain nodded gravely:  “February 15, 1846.  It was the night old Phoebe Hall died, and I was sitting with the body when I heerd the guns fired from the Minturn,” he remarked.—­“But go on, Jacob,” waving his pipe.