Dreary days followed for Joey and me.
As the days began to shorten I rode frequently to Captain Grif’s in the cool of the evening, taking Joey on the saddle behind me. And each night Joey dropped asleep on the small bed in Wanza’s room while I played a rubber of chess with the captain. When Father O’Shan was present a new zest was given our evenings.
One stormy night Father O’Shan, Joey and I were belated at the cottage, and the father and I kept our good host up to an unconscionable hour in the room beneath the eaves, while Joey slept peacefully on the lower floor. Father O’Shan was in fine fettle, and his stories were pungent, his drollery inimitable. As the storm began I rolled into the captain’s bunk and lay there in vast contentment. The port hole was open, framing an oval of purple sky and drifting cloud rack. My fantasy was so keen that I could fairly smell the odor of bilge and stale fish and tar, and hear the tramp of feet on the deck over my head. When the storm was at its fiercest, and the little cottage shook and the lightning flashed through the port hole, it was easy to cheat myself into the belief that I was experiencing all the wild delights of a storm at sea.
The talk had turned on the superstitions of men who go down to the sea in ships. “Lonely men are superstitious men,” the father said. “There is something about aloneness that engenders visions and superstitions. People who dwell apart all have their visions.”
“And their madnesses,” I interjected. “People who live at the edge of things are entitled to their superstitions. During the first months of my life on my homestead, before Joey’s advent, I had one or two narrow squeaks—came within an ace of insanity, I believe now. I went so far that like the man in the story I met myself coming round the corner of the cabin one day. I pulled up then and went to the city for a month and took a rather menial position.”
Father O’Shan was looking at me curiously.
“I never heard of that before,” he said. “You pulled through all right.”
“Oh, yes! If it had not been for my dog I might have gone under the first year. But the dog was understanding.”
“A dog,” Captain Grif explained carefully, “is the instinctinest animal there be—and the faithfulest.”