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Only John Snow's niece, Mary, looking up from her hands folded in her lap, said: "Surely you must find it painful, Saul Haverick, to ship with such a wicked man and take the big shares of money that fall to his crew?" "Eh!" said Saul, frightened-like at her.
"I bear Saul Haverick no great love," I said; "but I have never heard he wasn't a good fisherman, and who should ask more than that of his mate in a dory?" He looked out at me once more from the eyes that seemed so far back in his head; and from me he looked to the flag that was still to the half-mast of his vessel for the loss of Arthur Snow.
Such of the crew as stopped to speak of it did not like at all the look of that sea and sky, and some stopped beside the skipper to say it, he leaning against the main rigging in the way he had the while he would be studying the weather signs; but he made no answer to the crew, to that or any other word they had this evening except to Saul Haverick, and to him only when he came up from supper complaining of not feeling well.
To John Snow's home in Gloucester came the tale this night of how Arthur Snow was washed from the deck of Hugh Glynn's vessel and lost at sea; and it was Saul Haverick, his sea clothes still on him, who brought the word.
"He's a hard case of a man, shouldn't you say, Simon Kippen, who would play a shipmate foul?" I said nothing to that. "And, master or hand, we're surely all shipmates," he added; to which again I said nothing. "Will you take Saul Haverick for dory mate?" he said again.
"I won't say that, Simon, but foolish not to make ready for it." I looked about when we rose to the next sea for the vessel. But no vessel. I thought it hard. "Had you no distrust of Saul Haverick this morning?" I asked him. "I had. And last night, too, Simon." "And you trusted him?" "A hard world if we didn't trust people, Simon.
"He lost my boy we'll say no more of him," said John Snow. "Ay," said Saul Haverick, "we'll speak no more of him. But I was Arthur's dory mate, John Snow, as you well know, and my heart is sick to think of it. I'll be going now," and go he did, softly and by way of the back stairs; and he no more than gone when a knock came to the door.
I found myself saying "it's not you, nor Saul Haverick, nor any other living man will marry Mary Snow while Hugh Glynn lives, for there is no striving against the strength of the sea, and the strength of Hugh Glynn is the strength of the sea." But of what lay beyond that in my heart I could not say.
It was yet black night when I was called to go on watch, and, Saul Haverick still complaining, I went to call the skipper. But he was already up and had been, the watch before me said, for the better part of the night.
"I haven't the clever ways of Saul Haverick." "Simon, it's my judgment this night that Mary Snow will never marry Saul Haverick." "I'm glad to hear you think that, captain. 'Twould spoil her life or any woman's." "No, no," he said, quick-like. "Almost any woman's yes; but not Mary Snow's not altogether." "And why?"
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