So overflowing were the old man’s spirits that with good cheer even beyond his usual hearty greeting he gave the glad news to all along the road, to those he met, to those who stopped their labors or looked up from their rest in yards and houses, to give him a good-evening.
“It is a good evening for me, neighbor,” he would say, with a fine smile, his beard snowy in the sun now low across the western hills. “A fine, wonderful evening! Hal’s coming home to-night; he’s on the Sylvia Fletcher, just making in past the Rips, there—see, you can sight her, yourself.”
And then he would pass on, glad, triumphant. And as he went, hammers would cease their caulking, brushes their painting; and the fishers mending their russet nets spread over hedge or fence would wish him joy.
Here, there, a child would take his hand and walk with him a little way, till the captain’s stout pace tired the short legs, or till some good mother from a cottage door would call the little one back for supper. Just so, fifty years ago, yellow-skinned Malay mothers had called their children within doors, at Batu Kawan, lest Mambang Kuning, the demon who dwelt in the sunset, should do them harm. And just so the sunset itself, that wicked night at the Malay kampong, had glowered redly.
A mist was now rising from the harbor and the marshland, like an exhalation of pale ghosts, floating vaguely, quite as the smoke had floated above Batu Kawan. The slowly fading opalescence of the sky, reddening over the hills, bore great resemblance to those hues that in the long ago had painted the sky above the jagged mountain-chain in that far land. But of all this the captain was taking no thought.
No, nothing could enter his mind save the glad present and the impending moment when he should see his Hal again, should feel the boy’s hand in his, put an arm about his shoulder and, quite unashamed, give him a kiss patriarchal in its fine simplicity and love.
“It is a good evening!” he repeated. “A wonderful evening, friends. Why, Hal’s been gone nearly six months. Gone since last Christmas. And now he’s coming back to me, again!”
So he passed on. One thing he did not note: this—that though all the folk gave him Godspeed, no one inquired about Hal. That after he had passed, more than one shook a dubious head or murmured words of commiseration. Some few of the fisherfolk, leaning over their fences to watch after him, talked a little together in low tones as if they feared the breeze might bear their words to the old man.
Of all this the captain remained entirely unaware. On he kept, into the straggling outskirts of Endicutt. Now he could see the harbor only at rare intervals; but in the occasional glimpses he caught of it, he saw the Sylvia Fletcher’s tops’ls crumpling down and perceived that she was headed in directly for the wharf. He hurried on, at a better pace. Above all things Hal must not come, and find no grandfather waiting for him. That, to the captain’s mind, would have been unthinkable treason.
The captain strode along the cobblestoned main street, past the ship-chandlers’ stores, the sail-lofts and quaint old shops, and so presently turned to the right, into Hadlock’s Wharf. Here the going was bad, because of crates and barrels of iced fish and lobsters, and trucks, and a miscellany of obstructions. For a moment the captain was entirely blocked by a dray across the wharf, backing into a fish-shed. The driver greeted him with a smile.