“You were a posthumous child!” said Louise.

“Er—­I guess so.  Kinder ‘pindlin’, too.  Yes! yes!  Cap’n Am’zon’s ahead o’ me—­in ev’ry way.  When father died ’twas pretty average hard on mother,” Cap’n Abe pursued.  “We was llvin’ at Rocky Head, I guess I told you b’fore?”

“Yes,” Louise said, interested.

“The Bravo was makin’ reg’lar trips from Newport to Bangor, Maine.  Short-coastin’ v’y’ges paid well in them days.  There come a big storm in the spring—­onexpected.  Mother’d got a letter from Cap’n Josh—­father he’d put out o’ Newport with a sartain tide.  He warn’t jest a fair-weather skipper.  Cap’n Am’zon gits his pluck an’ darin’ from Cap’n Josh.

“Well, mother knowed he must be out o’ sight of Fort Adams and the Dumplin’s when the storm burst, and that he’d take the inside passage, the wind bein’ what it was.  She watched from Rocky Head and she seen what she knowed to be the Bravo heave in sight.

“There warn’t no foolin’ her,” pursued Cap’n Abe, whose pipe had gone out but whose knitting needles twinkled the faster.  “No.  She knowed the schooner far’s she could glim her.  She watched the Bravo caught in the cross-current when the gale dropped sudden, and tryin’ to claw off shore.

“But no use!  She was doomed!  There warn’t no help for the schooner.  She went right on to Toll o’ Death Reef and busted up in an hour.  Not a body ever was beached, for the current, tide, an’ gale was all off shore.  And it happened in plain sight of our windows.

“Two months later,” Cap’n Abe said reflectively, “I come into the world.  Objectin’, of course, like all babies.  Funny thing that.  We all come into it makin’ all kinds of a hullabaloo against anchorin’ here; and we most of us kick just as hard against slippin’ our moorin’s to get out of it.

“Land sakes!” he exclaimed in conclusion.  “There ye be.  I guess my mother hated the sea ’bout as much as any longshore woman ever did.  And there’s a slew of ’em detest it worse’n cats.  Why, ye couldn’t hire some o’ these Cape Cod females to get into a boat.  Their men for generations was drowned and more’n forty per cent. of the stones in the churchyards along the coast, sacred to the mem’ry of the men of the fam’lies, have on ’em:  ‘Lost at sea.’

“Can’t blame the women.  Old Ella Coffin that lives on Narrer P’int over yonder ain’t been to the main but once’t in fifteen years.  That was when an off-shore gale blew all the water out o’ the breach ’twixt the p’int and the mainland.

“Ye see,” said Cap’n Abe, smiling again, “Narrer P’int is re’lly an island, even at low water.  But then a hoss an’ buggy can splatter across’t the breach.  But it makes Marm Coffin seasick even to ride through water in a buggy.  Marked, she is, as you might say.

“Well, now, Louise, child,” the storekeeper added, “I’m a-gassin’ ’bout things that don’t much int’rest you, I cal’late.  I’ll light a lamp an’ show you up to your room.  When Perry Baker comes by and by, I’ll help him in with your trunks.  You needn’t worry about ’em.”