"P-p-politics!" interprets the mascot." "Perhaps I understand," says the widow. Withal, she can see David Lockwin sitting his last hours on that lounge. How unhappy he was! Ah! could he only have read her letter! "I don't just remember what I did after I found I wasn't fixed. It flabbergasted me, don't you forget it! I know I sneezed--and you must excuse me out there a while ago--and a big first mate he tried to put the hoodoo on me. No, that's not politics, but life is too short. We go out on deck." "To make the raft?" "Oh, that's all poppycock! Don't you believe no newspaper yarn. You just listen to me. I'm giving it to you straight. We go out on deck, and then I don't see Lockwin till we git the wood-choppers. How many of them wood-choppers, Noey?" "Ei-ei-eight!" "Mrs. Lockwin, them wood-choppers was no earthly use. It didn't pay to pull 'em in. I know it was me who hurt Lockwin with the oars. I didn't know for hours that he was aboard. He showed up at daybreak, you see. I tell you he was awfully hurt." The face of Esther is again miserably expectant. There will be no mystery of politics in it now. "I wouldn't know him, either by face or voice, Mrs. Lockwin. He lie in the stern and Noey try to help him, but the sea was fearful. I couldn't hear him speak. Noey--the coon here--hear him speak. "'Are you a-dying, old man?' I asks. "Noey says he answer that he was." "Yessah, h-h-he done spoke that he w-w-was." "'Want to send some word home, old man?' says I, to cheer him up; for don't you see, I allowed we was all in the drink--just tumble to what an old tub she was--117 of us at the start, and we all croak but me and the moke--the coon, I should say." The woman is afraid to interrupt. Suddenly the eye of Corkey moistens. He has escaped a great error. "I didn't hear his last words, nohow." "He said to p-p-put a st-st-stone over D-Davy's grave," says the lad The man turns on the boy. The brows beetle. The mouth gives a squaring movement, significant beyond words. The listener still waits. "And then," says Corkey, "he whisper his good-bye to you. 'Tell her good-bye for me.' _That's_ what he said, you moke!" "Yessah." Esther Lockwin grasps those short hands. She thanks the commodore for saving her husband, for living to tell her his last words. She can herself live to find her husband's body. But it is far too much for the navigator. His sobs resound through the room. The woman cannot weep. Her eyes are dry, "I had such feelings as no decent man ever gits," he explains, "but I'll never forgive myself that it was me who steered him agin it." "You have a better heart than most men, Mr. Corkey." "I'd give seven hundred cases in bar gelt if he was in Congress to-day, Mrs. Lockwin." "I know you would, you poor man. God bless you for it!" Corkey is feeling in all his pockets.