Then came a morning at last when the trawl was hauled in for the last time, and the boat's head pointed towards Yarmouth.
"When shall we reach harbour?" Stretton asked anxiously.
"If this breeze holds, in twenty-four hours," replied the skipper.
Twenty-four hours! Just a day and a night, and Stretton would step from the deck on to Gorleston Quay; and he was no nearer to the solution of his problem than when he had stepped from the quay on to the deck eight weeks ago. Those eight weeks were to have resolved all his perplexities, and lo! the eight weeks had passed.
He was in a fever of restlessness. He paced the deck all the day when he was not standing at the wheel; at night he could not sleep, but stood leaning over the bulwarks, watching the stars trembling in the quiet water. At one o'clock in the morning the Perseverance passed a lightship. Already the boat was so near home! And in the hour which followed, his eight weeks of solitary communing, forced, as it were, by immediate necessity, bore their fruit. His inspiration--he counted the idea no less than an inspiration-came to him suddenly. He saw all at once his course marked out for him upon the chart of life. He would not suffer a doubt of it to enter his mind; he welcomed it with passion, and the great load was lifted from his mind. The idea had come. It was water in a dry land.
A fisherman leaning over the bulwark by Stretton's side heard him suddenly begin to sing over to himself a verse or two of a song--
"Oh, come out, mah love! I'm a-waiting foh you heah!
Doan' you keep yuh window closed to-night."
It was a coon song which Stretton was humming over to himself. His voice dropped to a murmur, He stopped and laughed softly to himself, as though the song had very dear associations in his thoughts. Then his voice rose again, and there was now a kind of triumph in the lilt of the song, which had nothing to do with the words--
"De stars all a-gwine put dey little ones to bed
Wid dey 'hush now, sing a lullaby,'