washing over us and we both getting weak and him
getting black in the face--and maybe I was, too. I told you this once
before, but let me tell it again. 'Come and take the plug strap,
Tommie,' he says to me. 'Come and take the plug strap.' Do you know
what that means, Miss Foster?--and the seas sweeping over you and your
whole body getting numb? And I've been with him four days and four
nights--astray in the fog of the Western Banks in winter, and, for all
we knew and believed, we were gone. In times like those men get to
know each other, and I tell you, Miss Foster--" Clancy choked and
stopped. "To-day he sailed a race the like of which was never sailed
before. A dozen times he took the chance of himself going over the
rail. And why? The better to keep an eye on things and help his vessel
along? Yes. But why that? For that cup we've drowned a dozen times in
wine to-day? He never looked twice at it when he got ashore. He
hasn't seen it since he handed it to me on the dock. The boys might
like to look at it, he said. He's forgot he ever won it by now. He let
us take it up to a rum-shop and drink out of it the same as if it was
a tin-pail--the beautiful gold and silver cup--engraved. We used it
for a growler for all Maurice cared for the value of it, and there's
forty men walking the streets now that's got a list they got out of
that cup. We might have lost it, battered each other's drunken heads
in with it, and he wouldn't have said a dozen words about it. But
there was a necklace of pearls, and he thought you'd like them. 'To
you, Maurice, for winning the race,' says Mr. Duncan, 'for winning the
race,' and hands Maurice the pearls--your own guardian, Miss Foster,
and most crazy, he was that pleased. And that's what Maurice ran up to
get when the race was over--there was something a girl might like, or
thought so. And then what? On the way down a woman that I know--that
you know--tried to hold him up. Kissed him before a hundred
people--she knew you were waiting--she knew, trust a woman--and walked
down part way with him, because you were looking. And he being a man,
and weak, and only twenty-six--and the racing blood still running
through him--maybe forgot himself for five minutes--not knowing you
were within a mile. That doesn't excuse him? No, you're right, it
don't. But he, poor boy, knowing nothing--what does a boy of
twenty-six know?--knowing nothing--suspecting nothing--and yet, if he
forgot himself, he never reall