And the children stood watching them out of the town.
For men must work and women must weep,
And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.”
“Oh, Polly, don’t, please,” cried Ruth and Isabel together. “It makes the cold chills run down your back.”
“Well, now, I never feel that way about it,” said the Captain, contentedly. “Our times are in His hands, do you mind? Our times are in His hands. Don’t you ever forget that. When I was a youngster like you girls and Tom here, I used to reason along those lines too, and I’d be hoping I’d die this way and that way, and I’d be wishing for a chariot and some angels. Well, now it rests me to feel that I’m going to tread the same gangway as the rest, and my Captain is counting on me to stand faithful to my articles. I’ve a pretty good notion this dying business isn’t so troublesome as folks think. I’ve picked up a good many poor lads along the shore, and not one of them looked worried. Some were sort of smiling. It’s real comforting, if you look at it sensibly.”
The girls remembered that sunset hour all their lives. There was nothing exciting about the quiet station, nor the lighthouse out on the Point, although they did find the keeper, Billy Clewen, very kind. He was a little old man about seventy-four, but everybody along the shore called him Billy Clewen. One thing that he told them the girls thought very pathetic. He said in bad weather the sea birds would see the light and would fly to it, and beat their lives out against the heavy glass, seeking shelter from a storm.
“Were you ever in danger out here, Mr. Clewen?” asked Isabel, whose mind always drifted towards romance.
“Just call me Billy, miss,” answered the old fellow, happily, as he followed them out into the neat garden, with its paling fence half buried in sand. “I can’t just say as I was, and I can’t just say as I wasn’t, nuther. It’s about ten years ago, and my wife was alive. Her father used to be lighthouse tender before I come here, and she was born in this house. And that winter I come down sick with pneumony. Pretty bad sick I was, too, pretty bad sick. Sally, she had to turn in and trim the lamps and see they was lighted up on time, and look after me besides, and she was sorter tangled up herself with sciatic rheumatiz, and if the ile didn’t give out on top of it all.”
“The what, Billy?” asked Crullers, innocently.