“‘Let it come from the east, Let it come from the west’--
That’s when it would be breezin’ up. Dory-mates were we, the same as you and me be now, lad. And he was a dory-mate. I had to fight almost to keep him from doin’ half my work as well as all his own, at times. I mind how he used to speak of you when we’d get a breath between haulin’, or maybe walkin’ the deck of a night-watch together. ‘Martin, but if you could see how he’s growin’,’ he’d say. ‘Every trip in he looks a head taller. And the grip of him, Martin, when he winds his five little fingers around my one finger! And the beauty of him--the spit of his mother, Martin,’ he’d say. ‘And if you could see him of a mornin’ climb up on the bed and grab the mustache of me and twist it. Only two year old, Martin, and talk--man, he c’n talk better than I can--the long words of him, Martin! And I do hope he’ll never have to go fishin’!’ He said that last many a time. ‘I do hope he’ll never have to go fishin’ for a livin’! But if he do have to go, I’d lie easy in my grave--wherever my grave may be, Martin--if he was to have a dory-mate like you.’ And to think now we’re dory-mates-- Jack Teevens’s boy and Jack Teevens’s old dory-mate. And he had to be lost, your father. Some things are hard to take, believe in a Divine Providence much as we like. And then your mother had to die, too.”
“Yes, Martin. And I often wondered if she were not glad to go. What did she have to live for? And I think of it, what have I got to live for? If it comes to that, what have you, Martin--no wife, no family--what have you to live for?”
“What have I? Lad, it grieves me to hear you talk that way. What haven’t I to live for? I’ve hundreds of things to live and be thankful for. There’s my friends. There’s the little ones I’ve seen--not my own--my own were taken away, please God, and their mother--but my friends’ children that I’ve seen in the bornin’ almost and now growin’ up around me. And out here, never do I step aboard the vessel after a long day’s haulin’ and draggin’ that I’m not glad to see the fresh faces lookin’ at me over the rail--if it’s no more than the Skipper hangin’ to the wheel or the cook standin’ by the painter. And at home, boy! Never a time we breast Cape Sable goin’ home that I don’t begin to feel cheerful, no matter how hard and rough and maybe profitless a trip we’ve had. And when we raise Eastern Point! and goin’ into the harbor of Gloucester! Lad, lad, but my eyes run water ’most to think of the people I’m soon to see--to talk and shake hands with, maybe sit up a night or two with before I go out again. Lord, boy, if there warn’t a man or woman in the whole wide world to hail good-mornin’ to you--if it was no more than to look at happy people’s faces when you’re ashore--or out to sea again, if it’s no more than to look at the sky and the fine tumblin’ ocean! Even the sea in a blow, boy, is somethin’ to soothe a troubled man’s soul.”