“Pshaw!  We Troops, livin’ an’ dead, are all around the earth an’ the seas thereof.”

“But I want you to understand—­and I mean this—­any time you think you’d like to see him, tell me, and I’ll attend to the transportation.  ’Twon’t cost you a cent.”

“If you’ll walk a piece with me, we’ll go to my house an’ talk this to my woman.  I’ve bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don’t seem to me this was like to be real.”

They went blue-trimmed of nasturtiums over to Troop’s eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder.  There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved.  Cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily.

“We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne,” she said—­“one hundred boys an’ men; and I’ve come so’s to hate the sea as if ‘twuz alive an’ listenin’.  God never made it fer humans to anchor on.  These packets o’ yours they go straight out, I take it’ and straight home again?”

“As straight as the winds let ’em, and I give a bonus for record passages.  Tea don’t improve by being at sea.”

“When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an’ I had hopes he might follow that up.  But soon’s he could paddle a dory I knew that were goin’ to be denied me.”

“They’re square-riggers, Mother; iron-built an’ well found.  Remember what Phil’s sister reads you when she gits his letters.”

“I’ve never known as Phil told lies, but he’s too venturesome (like most of ’em that use the sea).  If Dan sees fit, Mr. Cheyne, he can go—­fer all o’ me.”

“She jest despises the ocean,” Disko explained, “an’ I—­I dunno haow to act polite, I guess, er I’d thank you better.”

“My father—­my own eldest brother—­two nephews—­an’ my second sister’s man,” she said, dropping her head on her hand.  “Would you care fer any one that took all those?”

Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words.  Indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours.

Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in the matter of Harvey’s rescue.  He seemed to have no desire for money.  Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy something for a girl.  Otherwise—­“How shall I take money when I make so easy my eats and smokes?  You will giva some if I like or no?  Eh, wha-at?.  Then you shall giva me money, but not that way.  You shall giva all you can think.”  He introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock.  As a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man.