Some towels, laid on the boulder to dry, had not been sufficiently weighted, and hung blown and crumpled on a lilac bush. These she collected, rearranged, complaining of the blindness of whoever might be about the house, and then proceeded within. There, to her amazement, she found Hester, in the middle of the morning, and Rhoda bent over the dinner table, sobbing into her arm. Hester met her with a drawn face darkly smudged beneath the eyes.
“The Emerald was lost off the Cape,” she said; “sunk with all on board. A man came over from Salem to tell us. He had to go right back. Pa, he's lost.”
Olive sank into a chair with limp hands. Rhoda continued uninterrupted her sobbing, while Hester went on with her recital in a thin, blank voice. “The ship J. Q. Adams stood by the Emerald, but there was such a sea running she couldn't do anything else. They just had to see the Emerald, with the men in the rigging, go under. That's what he said who was here. They just had to see Pa drown before their eyes.... The wind was something terrible.”
A deep, dry sorrow constricted Olive's, heart. Suddenly the details of packing her father's blue sea chest returned to her mind—the wool socks she had knitted and carefully folded in the bottom, the needles and emery and thread stowed in their scarlet bag, the tin of goose grease for his throat, the Bible that had been shipped so often. She thought of them all scattered and rent in the wild sea, of her father——
She forced herself to rise, with a set face, and put her hand on Rhoda's shoulder. “It's right to mourn, like Rachel, but don't forget the majesty of God.” Rhoda shook off her palm and continued in an ecstasy of emotional relief. Olive hardened. “Get up,” she commanded; “we must fix things here, for the neighbors and Pastor will be in. I wish Jem were back.”
At this Rhoda became even more unrestrained, and Olive remembered that Jem too was at sea, and that probably he had been caught in the same gale. “He'll be all right,” she added quickly; “the fishing boats live through everything.”
Yet she was infinitely relieved when, two days later, Jem arrived safely home. He came into the house with a pounding of heavy boots, a powerfully built youth with a rugged jaw and an intent quiet gaze. “I heard at the wharf,” he told Olive. They were in the kitchen, and he pulled off his boots and set them away from the stove.
“I'm thankful you're so steady and able,” she said.
“I am glad Jason's coming home—rich,” he replied tersely. Later, after supper, while they still sat at the table, he went on, “There is a fine yawl for sale at Ipswich, sails ain't been made a year, fifty-five tons; I could do right good with that. The fishing's never been better. Do you think Jason would be content to buy her, Olive? I could pay him back after a run or two.”
“He told you he'd do something like that,” she answered. “I guess now it wouldn't mean much to him.”