He puckered his lips beneath the white beard and mustache and tried, “Abide with Me,� which to his mind was second only to “Rock of Ages,� and reached for his faded blue jersey and pulled it over his head, still bravely trying to be melodious and cheerful.
“Father, be anything the matter witfc ’ee?� a voice hailed him as he cleared his head and touseled white hair from the clinging embrace of the knitted folds.
He appreciated, then, that for many months he had not attempted to whistle a melody, and that the mere fact that he had made such attempt was proof to other ears that he was endeavoring to put a cheerful face upon some trying predicament.
“Not a thing in the world, lass,� he declared, turning to meet the troubled eyes of his widowed daughter.
“You’re worrited,� she said, coming swiftly across to him and putting work-hardened hands on his broad, bent shoulders.
“Not too much,â€� he said, still making gallant pretense. “Us has still got the I’ll Try. Come here and look at her.â€� He pulled her over to the window set into the deep cob-walls built more than a hundred years before, and with a gnarled finger pointed through the leaded panes at the outer harbor below. “There she be. Look at her. I was a fool, Nettie, an old fool! I tried to get rich by puttin’ in they petrol motors, and hangin’ screw astarn. I thought they newfangled boats were the thing; but—it cost so much to run ’em they didn’t pay. So us has sold they engines, and had ’em hauled out, and—the I’ll Try be just the same as she was when I built her, livin’ by her sails and the winds of the Lord Almighty. Just as she was! No, not quite, because she’s got a wheel instead of the big clumsy tiller, and—I was a fool. All I should have done to her was to put in a boiler and a steam winch to handle the trawl. That was a mistake. But—there her be, waitin’ for us, all our own, and mebbe her’ll be glad to have they dirty engines out of her again. Everything considerin’,â€� he announced, almost triumphantly, “us be doin’ right well. Us owns this house. Us owns the I’ll Try. Us don’t owe a farthing, and us has more than nine and twenty pound in the bank to—â€� his voice halted, lowered a trifle, and then finished—“to start over again. Us’ll use the wind, hereafter, and make money so that when I have to quit the sea, our two nippers’ll have a fine start. A proper good start!â€�
She fathomed his anxieties as well as his brave dissimulation, and shook her head sadly, and stared up at him affectionately.
“Listen, lass,â€� he said, knowing that his pretense had failed. “After all, naught matters but the harbor lights. I doan’t mean they lights out there on Berry Head, and at the end of the breakwater, or the pier. I mean the lights that should shine for all of us when we come home from sea after all v’yages be done. Them’s the lights that count. The ones that finally brings us home. So—nothin’ else matters much to us, because us has done our best. Bean’t it so? You’m been a good darter to me! And us has got all this, and I be good for ten years more, and—â€� Again he stopped, scratched his white head with his fingers, seemed distracted, and worried, and ended with: “And so what the hell’s there to bother about? Tell me that!â€�
She was not shocked by his abrupt reversion to seaman’s speech. The turbid exclamations of his everyday life had nothing in common with his sincere convictions. As she had once warned a meddlesome but well-intentioned and well-shocked visiting curate, there was an unrecognized line of division between Captain Joshua’s faith, reverence and devoutness, and his use of words when in mental or physical action.
“His grandsons, my boys,â€� she stoutly asserted, “says bad things sometimes. Their gran-f’ur may be careless in front of them sometimes; but he have put great arms over they two lads shoulders at night when they all knelt, and taught them proper respect for God Almighty. That be enough! Thou could’st do no more by they lads than he—Captain Joshua! I think it’s better that ’ee go, now, and—please don’t ’ee ever come back, lest the good Lord knows thou wastest time! Such men as Captain Joshua be a lot better, I do reckon, than be you.â€�