“Well, no,” Jehoshaphat admitted, frankly. “I isn’t; leastways, not alone.”
“Not alone?” anxiously.
“No; not alone. I’ll go with you, Mister Wull, if you’re lonesome, an’ wants company. You sees, sir, I can’t give in. I jus’ can’t! I’m here, Mister Wull, in this here cranky rodney, beyond the Tombstone grounds, with a dirty gale from a point or two south o’ west about t’ break, because I’m the public o’ Satan’s Trap. I can die, sir, t’ save gossip; but I sim-plee jus’ isn’t able t’ give in. ’Twouldn’t be right.”
“Well, I won’t give in.”
“Nor I, sir. So here we is—out here beyond the Tombstone grounds, you on a pan an’ me in a rodney. An’ the weather isn’t—well—not quite kind.”
It was not. The black clouds, torn, streaming, had possessed the sky, and the night was near come. Haul-Away Head and Daddy Tool’s Point had melted with the black line of coast. Return—safe passage through the narrows to the quiet water and warm lights of Satan’s Trap—was almost beyond the most courageous hope. The wind broke from the shore in straight lines—a stout, agile wind, loosed for riot upon the sea. The sea was black, with a wind-lop upon the grave swell—a black-and-white sea, with spume in the gray air. The west was black, with no hint of other color—without the pity of purple or red. Roundabout the sea was breaking, troubled by the wind, indifferent to the white little rodney and the lives o’ men.
“You better give in,” old John Wull warned.
“No,” Jehoshaphat answered; “no; oh no! I won’t give in. Not in.”
A gust turned the black sea white.
“You better give in,” said Jehoshaphat.