It was decided, after much discussion, to send the money “fer the overhaulin’.” Several months elapsed. The machine came back too late to be of further use that season, and was carefully stowed away for the winter.
“She’ll prob’ly need another ‘overhaulin’’ in the spring ’fore she’ll go, an’ them fellers’ll want to nick us ag’in an’ keep ’er all next summer,” said Saunders. “If they charged by the days they kep’ ’er instid o’ by the job, we’d be busted. They’ll bust us anyhow, an’ it might as well be all at one crack. The Bug’s goin’ to stay in the house now, where she won’t git wet. She ain’t goin’ out on the vasty deep no more ’til spring. If she gits uneasy, she c’n run ’round in ’ere.”
The following May I called at the shanty and found Sipes sitting disconsolately in the door-way. After visiting with him for a while, I inquired for Saunders.
“Poor Bill’s dead. I ain’t got no partner now an’ it’s awful lonesome. He was a nice ol’ feller. He fussed ’round with the gas bug fer days an’ days, an’ ’e couldn’t make it go. He come in one night late, an’ the next mornin’ ’e didn’t git up. He didn’t seem in ’is right mind. His hand ’ud keep goin’ ’round an’ ’round, like it was crankin’ sump’n. Then ’e’d make sputterin’ sounds with ’is mouth like as if a motor was goin’, an’ then ’e’d keep still a long time like the Bug does, an’ then begin ag’in. He wouldn’t eat nothin’, an’ one night he said ’e guessed ’e needed overhaulin’. Then ’e said ‘choo-choo! choo-choo!’ three er four times, an’ ’e was gone. Come on with me an’ I’ll show you where ’e was laid away.”
We walked along the shore a short distance, crossed the beach and climbed the bluff. Near the foot of an old pine was a mound, on which was scattered the dried remnants of many spring flowers, which probably had come from the low ground in the ravine. Several bunches of white trilliums, with their leaves and roots, had been transplanted to the mound, but they had withered and died. A wide board, which protruded from the ground at the head of the grave, bore the rude inscription:
BiLL SauNDERS—DEAD Under the name was a rough drawing of the fly-wheel of the motor, evidently made with Sipes’s stubby pencil.
Chiselled epitaphs on granite tombs have said, but told no more.
We stood for some time before the mound. The old sailor wiped a tear from his single eye as we left Bill’s last resting place in silence and sorrow.
“Him an’ me was shipmates,” said the old man sadly, as we returned to the shanty. “I off’n go up there an’ set down an’ think about ’im. Bill was honest. They’s lots o’ fellers that wouldn’t swipe nothin’ that was red-hot an’ nailed down, ’spesh’ly ’round ’ere, but Bill never’d touch nothin’ that didn’t b’long to him er me. It was the gas bug that killed ’im. Fust it made ’im daffy an’ then it finished ’im. She’s over there now on the stern o’ the boat. I ain’t never had ’er out this year, but I’m goin’ to try ’er once’t, jest fer Bill’s sake. I think ’e’d like to have me do it.”