In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were overside and away.  Presently a schooner’s stump-foremast, snapped clean across, drifted past the bows.  Then an empty green dory came by, knocking on the ‘We’re Here’s’ side, as though she wished to be taken in.  Then followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but—­it was not the whole of a man.  Penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click.  Harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan’s hail as the crew came back.

“The Jennie Cushman,” said Dan, hysterically, “cut clean in half—­graound up an’ trompled on at that!  Not a quarter of a mile away.  Dad’s got the old man.  There ain’t any one else, and—­there was his son, too.  Oh, Harve, Harve, I can’t stand it!  I’ve seen—­” He dropped his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a gray-headed man aboard.

“What did you pick me up for?” the stranger groaned.  “Disko, what did you pick me up for?”

Disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man’s eyes were wild and his lips trembled as he stared at the silent crew.  Then up and spoke Pennsylvania Pratt, who was also Haskins or Rich or McVitty when Uncle Salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of a fool to the countenance of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong voice:  “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!  I was—­I am a minister of the Gospel.  Leave him to me.”

“Oh, you be, be you?” said the man.  “Then pray my son back to me!  Pray back a nine-thousand-dollar boat an’ a thousand quintal of fish.  If you’d left me alone my widow could ha’ gone on to the Provident an’ worked fer her board, an’ never known—­an’ never known.  Now I’ll hev to tell her.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” said Disko.  “Better lie down a piece, Jason Olley.”

When a man has lost his only son, his summer’s work, and his means of livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give consolation.

“All Gloucester men, wasn’t they?” said Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-becket.

“Oh, that don’t make no odds,” said Jason, wringing the wet from his beard.  “I’ll be rowin’ summer boarders araound East Gloucester this fall.”  He rolled heavily to the rail, singing: 

“Happy birds that sing and fly
Round thine altars, 0 Most High!”

“Come with me.  Come below!” said Penn, as though he had a right to give orders.  Their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute.

“I dunno who you be, but I’ll come,” said Jason submissively.  “Mebbe I’ll get back some o’ the—­some o’ the-nine thousand dollars.”  Penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind.

“That ain’t Penn,” cried Uncle Salters.  “It’s Jacob Boiler, an’—­he’s remembered Johnstown!  I never seed stich eyes in any livin’ man’s head.  What’s to do naow?  What’ll I do naow?”