The night editor is thinking of Mrs. Corkey, a handsome little woman, for whom the “boys in the office” have a pleasant regard.

“Is there an elevator?”

“I didn’t see no elevator when I was carrying the kitchen stove in.”

“How will Mrs. Corkey get up?”

This is too much.  Corkey has made a hundred trips to the new abode, each time laden with some heavy piece of furniture or package of goods.  How will Mrs. Corkey get there, when Corkey has been up and down the docks from the north pier to the lumber district on Ashland avenue, and all since supper?

The marine editor sits back rigidly in his chair.  The head quakes, the tongue plays, he looks defiantly at the night editor.

“She’s coming,” says the assistant telegraph editor, holding down his shears and paste-pot.

The head quakes, but it is not a sneeze.  It is a deliverance, ex cathedra.  The night editor wants to hear it.

“You bet your sweet life, Mrs. Corkey,” says the commodore, “screw her nut up four flight of stairs.  That’s what Mrs. Corkey do!”

The compliments of the evening are over.  It is a straining of every nerve now to get a good first edition for the fast train.

“Gale to-night, Corkey,” says the telegraph editor.  “We’ve taken most of your stuff for the front page.  The display head isn’t long enough.  Write me another line for it.”

“Hain’t got nothing to write,” Corkey doesn’t like to have his report taken out of its customary place.  When there are blood-curdling wrecks he wants the news in small type along with his port list.

“Hain’t got nothing to write,” he repeats sullenly.  He gapes and stretches.  He knows he must obey the telegraph editor.

“Hurry!  Give it to me.  Give me the idea.”  Corkey’s eye brightens.  He is a man of ideas, not of words.  He has an idea.  His head quakes.  The tongue begins its whirring like the fan-wheel before the clock strikes.

“You can say that the life-saving service display a great act,” says the marine editor, relieved of a grievous duty.

His pile of telegrams grows smaller.  The dreaded work will soon be over.

“How’s your rich widow?”

Corkey has not failed to plume himself on his aristocratic and familiar acquaintance.  His associates are themselves flattered.  Corkey is to take the telegraph editor to call on Mrs. Lockwin.  The night editor is jealously regarded as too smooth with the ladies.  He will be left to his own devices.

“How’s your rich widow?” is repeated.  But Corkey cannot hear.  He is reading a telegram that astonishes, electrifies and confuses him.

“COLLINGWOOD, 14.—­After wading ten miles along shore found yawl Africa sunk in three feet water, filled with sand and hundreds stone.  Can take you to spot.  What reward?  What shall we do?”

Corkey seizes the dispatch, puts on his coat, and rides downstairs.  On the street he finds it is midnight.  He looks for a carriage.  He sets his watch by a jeweler’s chronometer, over which a feeble gas flame burns all night.