“Gone! Who with?”
Caleb sunk on Captain Joe’s sea-chest, and buried his face in his blistered hands. For a moment he dared not trust himself to answer.
“I don’t know—I don’t know”—The broken words came between his rough fingers. Big tears rolled down his beard.
“Who says so? How do you know she’s gone?”
“The butcher seen ’er goin’ ’board the boat at Noank yesterday mornin’. She fixed everythin’ at home ’fore she went. I ain’t been to bed all night. I don’t know what ye kin do, but I had to come. I thought maybe you’d go home with me.”
The captain did not answer. Little scraps of gossip that he had heard now and then among the men floated through his memory. He had never paid any attention to them, except once when he had rebuked Nickles for repeating some slurring remark that Carleton had made one night at table. But even as he thought of them Betty’s face rose before him,—her sweet, girlish face with its dimples.
“It’s a dirty lie, Caleb, whoever said it. I wouldn’t believe it if I see it myself. Ain’t no better gal ’n Betty ever breathed. Go with you! Course I will’s soon’s I get my clo’es on.” He dressed hurriedly, caught up his oilskins, flung wide the shanty door, and made his way over the platforms towards the wharf.
When they reached the little cove in the rocks below, where the smaller boats were always sheltered, and he saw the sharpie, he stopped short.
“You ain’t come out here in that, Caleb?”
“It was all I could get; there warn’t nothin’ else handy, Cap’n Joe.”