He remained rather silent that evening, and even forgot to praise Prue's hot biscuit, of which he ate a good many with his creamed pollack. The sweet-tempered old woman chatted as she knitted on his blue-wool hose, but she scarcely expected more than his occasional grunted acknowledgment that he was listening. She always said it was "a joy to have somebody besides the cat around to talk to." The loneliness of shipmasters who sail the seven seas is often mentioned in song and in story; the loneliness of their wives at home is not usually marked.
They went to bed. Old men do not usually sleep much after second cock-crow, and it was not far from three in the morning when Cap'n Ira awoke. Like most mariners, he was wide awake when he opened his eyes. He lay quietly for several moments in the broad bed he occupied alone. The half-sobbing breathing of the old woman sounded from her room, through the open door.
"It's got to be done," Cap'n Ira almost audibly repeated.
He got out of the bed with care. It was both a difficult and a painful task to dress. When he had on all but his boots and hat he tiptoed to a green sea chest in the corner, unlocked it, and from beneath certain tarpaulins and other sea rubbish drew out something which he examined carefully in the semidarkness of the chamber. He finally tucked this into an inner pocket of the double-breasted pilot coat he wore. It sagged the coat a good deal on that side.
He crept out of the chamber, crossed the sitting room, and went into the ell-kitchen with his shoes in his hand. When he opened the back door he faced the west, but even the sky at that point of the compass showed the glow of the false dawn. Down in the cove the night mist wrapped the shipping about in an almost opaque veil. Only the lofty tops of craft like the Seamew were visible, black streaks against the mother-of-pearl sky line.
The captain closed the kitchen door softly behind him. He sat down on a bench and painfully pulled on his shoes and laced them. When he tried to straighten up it was by a method which he termed, "easy, by jerks." He sat and recovered his breath after the effort.
Then, taking his cane, he hobbled off to the barn. The big doors were open, for it had been a warm night. The pungent odor from Queenie's stall made his nostrils wrinkle. He stumbled in, and the pale face of the old mare appeared at the opening above her manger. She snorted her surprise.
"You'll snort more'n that afore I'm done with you," Cap'n Ira said, trying to seem embittered.
But when he unknotted the halter and backed her out of the stable, quite involuntarily he ran a tender hand down her sleek neck. He sighed as he led her out of the rear door.
The old mare hung back, stretching first one hind leg and then the other as old horses do when first they come from the stall in the morning.