"Why, I remember now," says I. "It was the yacht his son and his new wife was takin' a honeymoon trip on. And she went on some rocks up on the coast of Maine durin' a storm. The papers was full of it at the time. And how they was all rescued by an old lobsterman who made two trips in a leaky tub of a motorboat out through a howlin' northeaster. And—why, say, you don't mean to tell me you're Uncle Jimmy Isham, the hero?"
"Sho!" says he. "Don't you begin all that nonsense again. I was pestered enough by the summer folks that next season. You ought to see them schoolma'ams takin' snapshots of me every time I turned around. And gushin'! Why, it was enough to make a dog laugh! Course I ain't no hero."
"But that must have been some risky stunt of yours, just the same," I insists.
"Wall," he admits, "it wa'n't just the weather I'd pick to take the old Curlew out in; but when I see through the glasses what the white thing was that's poundin' around on Razor Back Ledges, and seen the distress signal run up—why, I couldn't stay ashore. There was others would have gone, I guess, if I hadn't. But there I was, an old bach, and not much good to anybody anyway, you know."
"Come, come!" says I. "Why wa'n't you as good as the next?"
"I dun'no," says he, sighin' a little. "Only—only you know the kind of a chap that everybody calls Uncle Jimmy? That—that's me."
"But you went out and got 'em!" I goes on.
"Yes," says he. "It wa'n't so much, though. You know how the papers run on?"
I didn't say yes or no to that. I was sittin' there starin' across the table, tryin' to size up this leather-faced old party with the bashful ways and the simple look in his steady eyes. The grizzled mustache curlin' close around his mouth corners, the heavy eyebrows, and the thick head of gray hair somehow reminds me of Mark Twain, as we used to see him a few years back walkin' up Fifth-ave. Only Uncle Jimmy was a little softer around the chin.
"Let's see," says I, "something like three summers ago, that was, wa'n't it?"