lookin' old--with him. And they told me how the _Rameses_, that had left
Boston the morning before, 'd been wrecked off Gay Head durin' the night
and sunk; and this was his mother, and she wanted me to go to the wreck
right away and see if I could find and bring up his body.

I wanted to go home--a week of days and nights--and I was tired, too,
and not easy to tire me in those days, but I thought of him and the
trust he had in the skipper that didn't know his business, and I looks
at my boy and at his mother, and Sarah's face came to me; and who's to
gainsay a woman whose son lies drowned? So my boy and me we put out that
night and was there next morning in our big wreckin'-tug.

'Twas a cold day, but clear, only there was a big sea runnin', makin' it
dangerous, everybody said, to be lyin' alongside her. And, I suppose
because o' that, my boy wanted to do the divin', but 'twas me that went
down and fastened the chains so she wouldn't slip off into the deep
water; and then I came up to rest, and it was while I was up restin'
that the chains slipped and she slid off and on to a ledge twenty
fathoms down. Twenty fathoms is deep water for divin'--but one or two 'd
been that deep before, and what one man has done another can do--and I'd
promised the mother to bring her son home to her.

I went down and made fast the chains again, and then I went inside her
to make one job of it, though I'd told the lad I'd come up after I'd
made fast the chains. I needed no pilot--I'd been on her often
enough--though I did find use for the patent electric hand-light I'd
carried. Down the big staircase I went, through the big saloon, and
toward his quarters I felt my way--through the fine cabin and the marble
bath-room and his own room--all as rich and comfortable as in his own
home ashore.