“The soup’s all right, Niece Louise.  ‘Tain’t so fillin’ as chowder, I cal’late, but it’ll keep a feller on deck for a spell.  That ain’t it.  I was just a-thinkin’.”

“Of what?”

“Hi-mighty!  It’s all over, ain’t it?” he said in desperation.  “Can’t never bring forward Cap’n Am’zon again, can I?  I got to be Cap’n Abe hereafter, whether I want to be or not.  It’s a turrible dis’pointment, Louise—­turrible!

“I ain’t sorry I went out there in that boat.  No.  For I got your father off, an’ he’d been carried overboard if he’d been let stay in them shrouds.

“But land sakes!  I did fancy bein’ Cap’n Am’zon ‘stead o’ myself.  And the worst of it is, Niece Louise, I can’t have nothin’ new to tell ‘bout Cap’n Am’zon’s adventures.  He’s drowned, an’ he can’t never go rovin’ no more.”

“But think of what you’ve done, Cap’n Abe,” Louise urged.  “You feared the sea—­and you overcame that fear.  All your life you shrank from venturing on the water; yet you went out in that lifeboat and played the hero.  Oh, I think it is fine, Cap’n Abe!  It’s wonderful!”

“Wonderful?” repeated Cap’n Abe.  “P’r’aps ’tis.  Mebbe I’ve been too timid all my life.  P’r’aps I could ha’ been a sailor and cruised in foreign seas if I’d just had to.

“But mother allus was opposed.  She kept talkin’ against it when I was a boy—­and later, too.  She told how scar’t she was when Cap’n Josh and the Bravo went down in sight of her windows.  And mebbe I ketched it more from her talkin’ than aught else.

“But I never realized that stress of circumstances could push me into it an’ make a man of me.  I had a feelin’ that I’d swoon away an’ fall right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was t’other day.

“And see!  Nothing of the kind happened!  I knew I’d got to make good Cap’n Am’zon’s character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again.  I don’t dispute I’ve been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise.  But—­but it’s sort o’ made a man o’ me for once, don’t ye think?

“I dunno.  Good comes out o’ bad sometimes.  Bitter from the sweet as well.  And when a man’s got a repertation to maintain——­There was that feller Hanks, on the Lunette, out o’ Nantucket.  I’ve heard Cap’n Am’zon tell it——­”

“Cap’n Abe!” gasped Louise.

“Hi-mighty!  There I go again,” said the storekeeper mournfully.  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks—­nor break him of them he’s l’arned!”

Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until Cap’n Abe was up and about again.  Then they could safely leave him to the ministrations of Betty Gallup.

“Somehow,” confessed that able seaman, “he don’t seem just like he used to.  He speaks quicker and sharper—­more like that old pirate, Am’zon Silt, though I shouldn’t be sayin’ nothin’ harsh of the dead, I s’pose.  I don’t dispute that Cap’n Am’zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to think on’t.