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Updated: August 22, 2024
Dirk's household improved somewhat. Dirk was the most intelligent of the fishermen, and began to dimly perceive that it was much better and pleasanter to live cleanly and neatly than to pattern his household arrangements after the beasts of the field.
It was sheer criminal stupidity to have looked over the edge at his fallen commander. Maybe the angry scarlet of Dirk's complexion provoked Barraclough's attack and before the poor man had recovered from his surprise a heavy lobster pot came smashing down over his face with agonising force, the splintering basket-work playing havoc with his features.
If he did particularly well, they were willing to order for him a glass of beer, or a fairly good cigar; in any case he had a chance to get warm. This was actually Dirk's only present source of income! Yet he shrank from it; he could not have told you why, but on this particular Sabbath he was averse to earning his coveted warmth in this way.
But he was dead, and Dirk's fine and sensitive nature recoiled from the thought that it might be said of him that he had taken advantage of the inexperience of a kinswoman in order to win her fortune. Also deep down in his mind he had a sincerer and quite secret reason for reticence, whereof more in its proper place. Thus matters stood between these two.
The blood, meantime, rolled in dark waves over Dirk's face. He had been cheered before. None of his present applauders could imagine what a set had often clapped their hands over his successful imitations; but Dirk, who liked applause as well as other human beings do, had never, in his wildest stretches of imagination, placed himself before such people as listened now and received their approval.
"Whilst he's gettin' the private signals they're rather particular ones I went forrard to see the Dirk's gunner about borrowin' a holdin'-down bolt for our twelve-pounder. My open ears, while I was rovin' over his packet, got the followin' authentic particulars." I heard his voice change, and his feet shifted.
He came forward now, from the carriage where he had stood waiting, and laid a hand on Dirk's arm. "And you come home with me to-night, Colson," he said in a cordial tone, such as he might have used with any young friend; "then we shall have a chance to talk things over and make plans." "That is nice," Mrs. Roberts said, quickly, rejoicing in her heart over Ried's promptness to act.
Dirk made an onslaught upon the rubbish which had been collecting in their kitchen and about the doorsteps for years, and which no one had had the energy to remove, and threw many a basketful into the sea. The neighbors, meanwhile, were not entirely insensible to the fact that Dirk's house began to present both within and without a much more cleanly and respectable appearance than their own.
He felt as if he could never bear to meet Dirk's eyes after promising him aid and failing to bring it; and, with this thought oppressing him, and the lonely cry of the sea filling his ears, he dressed himself, and went down to the library with a downcast heart.
Dirk's little one was not the only fever-stricken sleeper that was laid to rest in the dreary little burying-ground that winter. The fever, born of want and filth and exposure, lingered among the wretched huts, taking down the strong men and wasting the lives of the little ones, till, after weary lingering, they flickered out.
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