The Conqueror had fitted out at Duncan's; and Duncan's wharf and store had not changed in twenty years. Mr. Duncan did not like changes.
The old shelves of canned goods in Duncan's, the long packages of blue-papered macaroni, the little green cartons of fish-hooks, the piled-up barrels of flour and boxes of hardtack—they were all of the same old reliable brands. And the woollen mitts in strings! And in back was an area of kegs of red lead and hanks of tarred ground-line and coils of stout rope, and oilskins and sou'-westers, and rubber boots and the heavy leather redjacks—the smell of them was all over Duncan's.
Fred Lichens, who had kept books for thirty years for Mr. Duncan, was looking down the wharf at the Conqueror warping into the slip when Mrs. Pentle arrived in her car. Her arrival was not surprising. She had half a dozen small charities in Gloucester, and she came regularly to Mr. Duncan's for advice about them.
Fred knew all this exactly, because he kept the books for the Gloucester end of these things—drawing a few extra dollars a month therefor—and he had known Mrs. Pentle since she was a little girl and used to come with her mother, and without her as she grew older, to Mr. Duncan's to draw, against whatever would be her father's share, the stores which the family needed to keep them alive while the father was out to sea.
Fred remembered when the girl who was now Mrs. Pentle left high school to go to work in Boston. She was a bouncingly pretty girl, and within two years married Pentle, the millionaire department-store man.
Fred dusted a chair for Mrs. Pentle and set it in her favorite spot, which was beside a window in Mr. Duncan's own office looking out on the harbor. Sitting there, she saw an iced-up wreck of a vessel and some of her crew leaping up onto the wharf, where a crowd was surrounding them. She asked what vessel it was, and Fred told her—the Conqueror, Peter Crudden; and she said No! and Fred said Yes, ma'am, it was.
"I wonder if I should know him now," she said; and then: "Which is Peter Crudden?"
"Captain Crudden," said Fred, "is the one Mr. Duncan is bending toward to hear better."
The crowd was moving up toward the store. Mrs. Pentle jumped up on her chair so as to be able to look over the glazed lights of glass between the private office and the store as they came in.
Peter Crudden was a hard-looking figure of a man, coming into Duncan's store that day. He had not shaved for days, and his thick hair looked enormous—it was so tangled. He had not slept in a week; and when he took his seat on the long store bench and let his head settle wearily back against the wall he looked old.