Corkey is regaining his presence of mind.

The widow attests the correctness of Corkey’s illustration.

“You bet your sweet life, nobody could get nothing out of him, then.  What ailded him I don’t know, and I ain’t calling the turn, but nobody could get nothing out of him, I know that.  I talk and talk.  I slap him on the shoulder, and pull his leg and sing to him—­”

“S-s-say it over,” suggests the mascot.

The widow cannot understand.

“Why, don’t you know, I was expecting him to fix me?”

“Is it politics?”

“That’s what it is.  So I guess I sing to him an hour—­two hours—­I can’t tell—­when he comes to.  ‘Mr. Corkey,’ says that feller—­says Mr. Lockwin—­’you don’t get nothing; You don’t get the light at Ozaukee.’

“‘There ain’t no lamp at Ozaukee,’ says I.

“‘That’s what the First High said,’ says he.  So you see I was whipsawed.  I get nothing.”

“P-p-politics!” interprets the mascot.”

“Perhaps I understand,” says the widow.  Withal, she can see David Lockwin sitting his last hours on that lounge.  How unhappy he was!  Ah! could he only have read her letter!

“I don’t just remember what I did after I found I wasn’t fixed.  It flabbergasted me, don’t you forget it!  I know I sneezed—­and you must excuse me out there a while ago—­and a big first mate he tried to put the hoodoo on me.  No, that’s not politics, but life is too short.  We go out on deck.”

“To make the raft?”

“Oh, that’s all poppycock!  Don’t you believe no newspaper yarn.  You just listen to me.  I’m giving it to you straight.  We go out on deck, and then I don’t see Lockwin till we git the wood-choppers.  How many of them wood-choppers, Noey?”

“Ei-ei-eight!”

“Mrs. Lockwin, them wood-choppers was no earthly use.  It didn’t pay to pull ’em in.  I know it was me who hurt Lockwin with the oars.  I didn’t know for hours that he was aboard.  He showed up at daybreak, you see.  I tell you he was awfully hurt.”

The face of Esther is again miserably expectant.  There will be no mystery of politics in it now.  “I wouldn’t know him, either by face or voice, Mrs. Lockwin.  He lie in the stern and Noey try to help him, but the sea was fearful.  I couldn’t hear him speak.  Noey—­the coon here—­hear him speak.

“‘Are you a-dying, old man?’ I asks.

“Noey says he answer that he was.”

“Yessah, h-h-he done spoke that he w-w-was.”

“‘Want to send some word home, old man?’ says I, to cheer him up; for don’t you see, I allowed we was all in the drink—­just tumble to what an old tub she was—­117 of us at the start, and we all croak but me and the moke—­the coon, I should say.”

The woman is afraid to interrupt.

Suddenly the eye of Corkey moistens.  He has escaped a great error.  “I didn’t hear his last words, nohow.”