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Updated: June 1, 2025
"I seen her, Fogarty, from the lookout," cried the captain, in answer, grabbing his sou'wester; he was already in his hip-boots and tarpaulin. "What is she?" "Schooner, I guess, sir." "Two or three masts?" asked the captain hurriedly, tightening the strap of his sou'wester and slipping the leather thong under his gray whiskers. "Can't make out, sir; she come bow on. Uncle Ike see her fust."
The boy, leaning far over the cockpit-rail and holding on for dear life, was passing him a knife. The second man stood at the wheel, putting it up with flying hands and forcing the sloop to pay off. Beside him, his injured arm in a sling, was Red Nelson, his sou'wester gone and his fair hair plastered in wet, wind-blown ringlets about his face.
They had simultaneously caught sight of something dark, half sunk in the shallow water. In a moment they were struggling up the shingle slope toward the fire, carrying a heavy weight. They laid their burden by the fire, where the snow had melted away, and it was a man. He was in oilskins, and some one cut the tape that tied his sou'wester. His face was covered with blood.
As the schooner carried no signal-flags, he waved his sou'wester in answer, and the flags came down, to be replaced by others. "Rudder carried away," he read, and then looked with the glasses. "Rudder seems all right; must mean his steerin'-gear. Why don't they rig up suthin', or a drag over the stern?" "Don't know enough," said an expatriated Englishman of the crew.
I saw the face for an instant. The man wore a sou'wester, and he had drawn his thick, rough coat up as though he would hide his head under the collar. Cheek and chin I could see were covered by a thick blond beard. His movements were apparently clumsy, but his figure was lithe and sinuous. And his eyes! Once seen they never could be forgotten.
His hostess began issuing orders. A few minutes later, Primmie, adequately if not beautifully attired in a man's oilskin "slicker," sou'wester, and rubber boots, clumped forth in search of the suitcase. She returned dripping but grinning with the missing property. Its owner regarded it with profound thankfulness. He could at least retire for the night robed as a man and a brother.
When I had come up to him he had stood up from force of instinct, and had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were steering, though the wheel was lashed; but he still bent his face down, and it was half hidden by the edge of his sou'wester, while he seemed to be staring at the compass.
With his sound one he was gazing into the fire, on a windy afternoon in the rainy season, when a chunky man in a sou'wester was-ushered into his presence, and after announcing that he was no other than Captain Peleg Scudder, of the schooner General Court, from Salem, he was made welcome in a manner quite out of proportion in its warmth to the importance that such a disclosure would have for the every-day citizen.
He was serious and waited until I had strapped my sou'wester under my chin before saying anything. "Mebbe I'm wrong, an' mebbe I ain't," he said. "But I believes a man has duties to stick to while he's on watch above water. One of these is not to turn tail and scud away, a-showin' your stern to every hard thing as comes along.
She clad herself in rain-coat, sou'wester, and boots, and hurried out. Walking was difficult enough, even in the shelter of the village, but not until she had emerged upon the beach did she meet the full strength of the gale. Here it wrapped her garments about her limbs until she could scarcely move.
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