istling the night we
lost the man overboard. I don't know why it has stuck in my head,
and of course it's all nonsense; but it seems to me that I have
heard it all the rest of the trip."

I didn't say anything to that, but I wondered just how much the
old man had understood. Then we turned in, and I slept ten hours
without opening my eyes.

I stuck to the _Helen B. Jackson_ after that as long as I could
stand a fore-and-after; but that night when we lay in Havana was
the last time I ever heard "Nancy Lee" on board of her. The spare
hand had gone ashore with the rest, and he never came back, and
he took his tune with him; but all those things are just as clear
in my memory as if they had happened yesterday.

After that I was in deep water for a year or more, and after I
came home I got my certificate, and what with having friends and
having saved a little money, and having had a small legacy from
an uncle in Norway, I got the command of a coastwise vessel, with
a small share in her. I was at home three weeks before going to
sea, and Jack Benton saw my name in the local papers, and wrote
to me.

He said that he had left the sea, and was trying farming, and he
was going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for
that, for it wasn't more than forty minutes by train; and he and
Mamie would be proud to have me at the wedding. I remembered how
I had heard one brother ask the other whether Mamie knew. That
meant, whether she knew he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She
had taken her time about it, for it was pretty nearly three years
then since we had lost Jim Benton overboard.

I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for
sea; nothing to prevent me from going over for a day, I mean;
and I thought I'd like to see Jack Benton, and have a look at the
girl he was going to marry. I wondered whether he had grown
cheerful again, and had got rid of that drawn look he had when he
told me it wasn't his fault. How could it have been his fault,
anyhow? So I wrote to Jack that I would come down and see him
married; and when the day came I took the train, and got there
about ten o'clock in the morning. I wish I hadn't. Jack met me at
the station, and he told me that the wedding was to be late in
the afternoon, and that they weren't going off on any silly
wedding trip, he and Mamie, but were just going to walk home from
her mother's house to his cottage. That was good enough for him,
he said. I looked a