Skipper Jonathan Stock was alone with the trader in the shop of Candlestick Cove. The squat, whitewashed building gripped a weather-beaten point of harbor shore. It was night—a black night, the wind blowing high, rain pattering fretfully upon the roof. The worried little trader—spare, gimlet-eyed, thin-whiskered, now perched on the counter—slapped his calf with a yardstick; the easterly gale was fast aggravating his temper beyond control. It was bright and warm in the shop; the birch billets spluttered and snored in the stove, and a great lamp suspended from the main rafter showered the shelves and counter and greasy floor with light. Skipper Jonathan’s clothes of moleskin steamed with the rain and spray of the day’s toil.
“No, John,” said the trader, sharply; “she can’t have un—it can’t be done.”
Jonathan slowly examined his wrist; the bandage had got loose. “No?” he asked, gently, his eyes still fixed on the salt-water sore.
“No, sir.”
Jonathan drew a great hand over his narrow brow, where the rain still lay in the furrows. It passed over his beard—a gigantic beard, bushy and flaming red. He shook the rain-drops from his hand.
“No, Mister Totley,” he repeated, in a patient drawl. “No—oh no.”
Totley hummed the opening bars of “Wrecked on the Devil’s Finger.” He broke off impatiently—and sighed.
“She can’t,” Jonathan mused. “No—she can’t.”
The trader began to whistle, but there was no heart in the diversion; and there was much poignant distress in the way he drummed on the counter.