"That's her, ma'am—the Conqueror. It's queer what bad luck goes with those proud names, ma'am. Peter Crudden was master of her."
"Peter Crudden! I played with Peter Crudden when we were children together. And he's lost?"
"When they print the names o' the crew in the Gloucester papers, it's a hundred to one they're gone, ma'am. A married sister o' Peter's is a neighbor o' my married daughter's up in Boston, and they're cryin' their heart out a'ready, she writes me—Peter's sister an' her children."
Mrs. Pentle closed the book.
"We live such sheltered lives here ashore, most of us, don't we, John? And we complain at the smallest little discomfort—many of us, I mean. And those brave men sail out to the dangerous waters in their little boats, where the best of it is hardship and death comes so often. It must be born in me—I just can't help feeling different toward those fishermen from what I do toward the men I meet in my business in the city."
She left; and, watching her swing down the ladder, John Ferguson was thinking that for a woman of her build—full-bosomed and no slimling—she was cert'nly light on her feet, and wondering why a young and good-looking widow as she was—dang good-looking—why more o' those wealthy young men she must know hadn't hooked her afore that. "Must be," mused John, "none of 'em's used the right bait."
John turned, just naturally to have another look out to sea, and—"Well, you old gadabout!" muttered John and hurried to point his glasses at what he saw wabbling in.
"Dang me if she c'n be!" cried John. "Dang me, but she is!"
It was the Conqueror—her foremast gone half-way to the deck, her mainmast gone clean to the deck, and her bowsprit broken off at the knight-heads. And she was a foot thick, or more, in ice; and in her jury-rigging was her flag—at half-mast.
"That's one, ye ravenous sea, dang ye, ye didn't get!" muttered John. "And she'll have a tale to tell!" And wondering how many of 'em were gone, and who they were, he entered the month and day of her return.