it is fair to presume, that death was preferred rather than the brandy.
With much more concerning her miraculous recovery through the aid of a
"terbacker and onion poultice."

On general principles the Captain objected to the granting of a license
to a fellow like "Web" Saunders, but it was the effect that this action
of the State authorities might have upon his friend John Baxter that
troubled him most.

For forty-five years John Baxter was called by Cape Cod people "as smart
a skipper as ever trod a plank." He saved money, built an attractive
home for his wife and daughter, and would, in the ordinary course of
events, have retired to enjoy a comfortable old age. But his wife died
shortly after the daughter's marriage to a Boston man, and on a voyage
to Manila, Baxter himself suffered from a sunstroke and a subsequent
fever, that left him a physical wreck and for a time threatened to
unsettle his reason. He recovered a portion of his health and the
threatened insanity disappeared, except for a religious fanaticism
that caused him to accept the Bible literally and to interpret it
accordingly. When his daughter and her husband were drowned in the
terrible City of Belfast disaster, it is an Orham tradition that John
Baxter, dressed in gunny-bags and sitting on an ash-heap, was found by
his friends mourning in what he believed to be the Biblical "sackcloth
and ashes." His little baby granddaughter had been looked out for by
some kind friends in Boston. Only Captain Eri knew that John Baxter's
yearly trip to Boston was made for the purpose of visiting the girl who
was his sole reminder of the things that might have been, but even the
Captain did not know that the money that paid her board and, as she grew
older, for her gowns and schooling, came from the bigoted, stern old
hermit, living alone in the old house at Orham.