your wife
is makin' up to her only livin' relative, and she dyin', it's no time to
be exactin'. So she stayed on in the West. I've forgotten where--Chicago
maybe?--too far, anyway, for me to go to her, because I had to stand
ready in my business to leave at a minute's notice. A gale c'd rise in
an hour, the coast be cluttered with wrecks in one day. And there were
so many big people, steamboat people and big shippin' firms, who counted
on me, would 'a' been disappointed, you see, if I wasn't on deck when
needed. It's something, after all, to be honest in your work all your
life, not leave it to careless helpers.

He lost his interest in the wreckin' after a while, and natural, too. He
hadn't to build up his family's name or provide a livin' for anybody by
it. And her aunt still lingered, she wrote. And then I wrote that I
would give up the business if she said so, and go out there. I could
begin again--there was great shippin' on the lakes--better sell out a
hundred wreckin' plants than be so much apart, for it's terrible to be
comin' from the sea and never find the woman afore ye. But she
telegraphed to wait, she would be home soon, and she wanted to see me,
too, about something partic'lar. That was the night before the Portland
breeze--in the year o' the war with Spain--yes, '98 that would be, the
year the _Portland_ went down on Middle Bank with all on board. A
foolish loss that, and nobody ever went to jail for it; but it's mostly
that way, nobody sufferin' for it--but the families o' the lost
ones--when passenger ships go down at sea.

There was half a dozen steamboat firms telegraphin' and telephonin' the
morning after that storm, and I had to leave without waitin' till she
got home. There was a wreck off Cape Cod, and that kept me away a week,
and I was hurryin' back by way of Boston. And I saw him--me hurryin' up
Atlantic Avenue to take the train and him headed for the docks. I hailed
him. There was a rumor--'twas in the papers--that I'd gone down with the
wreck I'd been workin' on off Cape Cod--Chatham way--but of course no
one who knew me well believed it. But he must've believed it,
for--"What, you!" he says--not even puttin' in the "Captain" that he
never before forgot. I missed that little word from him--and he didn't
look at me the same--him that had always such a friendly way with me. He
seemed to be in a great hurry, and so I left him without more talk. He
did not even tell me that the _Rameses_ was in