“He said to p-p-put a st-st-stone over D-Davy’s grave,” says the lad

The man turns on the boy.  The brows beetle.  The mouth gives a squaring movement, significant beyond words.

The listener still waits.

“And then,” says Corkey, “he whisper his good-bye to you.  ’Tell her good-bye for me.’ That’s what he said, you moke!”

“Yessah.”

Esther Lockwin grasps those short hands.  She thanks the commodore for saving her husband, for living to tell her his last words.  She can herself live to find her husband’s body.

But it is far too much for the navigator.

His sobs resound through the room.  The woman cannot weep.  Her eyes are dry,

“I had such feelings as no decent man ever gits,” he explains, “but I’ll never forgive myself that it was me who steered him agin it.”

“You have a better heart than most men, Mr. Corkey.”

“I’d give seven hundred cases in bar gelt if he was in Congress to-day, Mrs. Lockwin.”

“I know you would, you poor man.  God bless you for it!”

Corkey is feeling in all his pockets.

“Take this handkerchief, Mr. Corkey, if it will help you.  God bless you always!  God bless you always!  Come and see me often.  I shall never get tired of hearing how my husband died.  He must have been brave to cling to the boat.”

“You bet he was, and if ever you need money, you come to me, for I’m the boy that’s got it in the yellow!”

Corkey bows himself down the steps.  There two managers of museums implore a few moments’ conversation.  They tender their cards.

“Naw!” says Corkey, “we don’t want no museum.”

The managers persist.

“No use o’ your chinning us!  Go on, now!”

The heroes escape from their persecutors.  The mind of Corkey reverts to the parlors of Esther Lockwin.

“Great Caesar!” he exclaims.

“Yessah!”

“Steer me to a bar!”

A few moments later Corkey leans sidewise against a whisky counter, his left foot on the iron rail, his hand on the glass.  A mouthful of tobacco is gnawed from the biggest and blackest of plugs.  The mascot stands by the stove.

The bartender is proud to serve the only Corkey, the most famous man on the whole “Levee.”  While the bartender burns incense, the square mouth grows scornful, laconic, boastful.  Corkey is himself again.  The barkeeper goes to the oil-room for a small bottle.

The handsome eyes of the navigator rest on his protege.  The head sets up a vibration something like the movement of a rattlesnake before it strikes.  The little tongue plays about the black tobacco.  The speech comes forth.

“It’s a great act I play on the widow about the ‘last words’.  He didn’t say nothing of the kind.  I come near putting my foot right into it.”

“Yessah!”

Corkey’s right hand is in his side pocket.  He ruminates.  He feels an unfamiliar thing in his pocket.  He draws out a dainty white-and-black handkerchief.  There is a painful reaction in his mind.