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Jethro Rackby took to drink somewhat, to drown these utterances, or perhaps to quench some stinging thirst within him which he knew not to be of the soul. When certain of the elders asked him why he did not cut the drink and take a decent wife, he laughed like a demon, and cried out: "What's that but to swap the devil for a witch?"
When she saw the strange man beside him she stopped short and averted her face, not before observing that Rackby might have passed for Peter's father. "Not so shy not so shy," murmured Deep-water Peter, as if she had been a wild filly coming up to his hand. "She cannot hear you," Rackby interposed. The gleam of triumph in his eye was plain. "Can't hear?" "Neither speak nor hear."
But in one glance he saw that she had no need to lie northeast and southwest to make certain of unbroken sleep. To the child born at the height of the storm the harbor master gave a name, his own Rackby. He was town clerk, and he gave her this name when he came to register her birth on the broad paper furnished by the government.
The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with their familiar assurances.
That wind-blown voice of his, with its deepwater melodiousness, had dropped to a whisper. "Even providential," the harbor master returned, and his eye glittered. Peter would have said something to that, but Rackby, with a stern hand at his daughter's elbow, passed out of hearing. Peter Loud was promptly taken in the coils of that voiceless beauty whose speaking eye had met his so squarely.
"Come, Harbor Master," he said; "put your thumb mark in the corner along with the rest of us." Rackby drew back. "Why should I dance?" he muttered. He was town clerk as well as harbor master a scholarly man with visionary, pale eyes, and a great solitary, as Peter knew. "Why? I'll tell you why," said Peter. "To bring joy to Caddie Sill's heart, if nothing more.
He called this to mind when on the night of the dance information came to his ear that she had sold her pearls to lift the lien on Cap'n Sam Dreed's ship, with her own hands tearing down the libel from the mast and grinding it under her heel. No man whom she had once passed and silently interrogated could quite forget her, not even Jethro Rackby.
The crew of the wrecked ship stood heaving and glittering in their oils, plucking their beards with a sense of trespass, hearing the steeple clock tick, and water drum on the worn floor. "All you men clear out," said Caddie Sills, faintly. "Leave me here with Jethro Rackby." They set themselves in motion, pushing one against the other with a rasp and shriek of oilskins and Peter Loud last of all.
"How should I know?" lisped Caddie Sills, with a remembering smile. "The sea is wide and uncertain, little man." The door opened again. A woman appeared and little Rackby was thrust out among the able seamen. Three hours later he came and looked down on Cad Sills again. Rain still beat on the black windows. Her lips were parted, as if she were only weary and asleep.
Peter, stooping, read what was written there; he cried for joy, and crushed her in his arms, as little Rackby had crushed her mother, once, under the Preaching Tree. A strong shudder went through her. The yellow hair whipped about her neck. Then for one instant he saw her eyes go past him and fix themselves high up at the top of that crag.
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