The harbor lights were out; all the world of sea and sky and barren rock was black. It was Saturday—long after night, the first snow flying in the dark. Half a gale from the north ran whimpering through the rigging, by turns wrathful and plaintive—a restless wind: it would not leave the night at ease. The trader _Good Samaritan_ lay at anchor in Poor Man’s Harbor on the Newfoundland coast: this on her last voyage of that season for the shore fish. We had given the schooner her Saturday night bath; she was white and trim in every part: the fish stowed, the decks swabbed, the litter of goods in the cabin restored to the hooks and shelves. The crew was in the forecastle—a lolling, snoozy lot, now desperately yawning for lack of diversion. Tumm, the clerk, had survived the moods of brooding and light irony, and was still wide awake, musing quietly in the seclusion of a cloud of tobacco smoke. By all the signs, the inevitable was at hand; and presently, as we had foreseen, the pregnant silence fell. * * * * * With one blast—a swishing exhalation breaking from the depths of his gigantic chest, in its passage fluttering his unkempt mustache—Tumm dissipated the enveloping cloud; and having thus emerged from seclusion he moved his glance from eye to eye until the crew sat in uneasy expectancy. “If a lad’s mother tells un he’ve got a soul,” he began, “it don’t do no wonderful harm; but if a man finds it out for hisself—” The pause was for effect; so, too, the pointed finger, the lifted nostrils, the deep, inclusive glance. “—it plays the devil!” The ship’s boy, a cadaverous, pasty, red-eyed, drooping-jawed youngster from the Cove o’ First Cousins, gasped in a painful way. He came closer to the forecastle table—a fascinated rabbit. “Billy Ill,” said Tumm, “you better turn in.” “I isn’t sleepy, sir.” “I ’low you better _had_,” Tumm warned. “It ain’t fit for such as you t’ hear.” The boy’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “I wants t’ hear,” he said. “Hear?” “Ay, sir. I wants t’ hear about souls—an’ the devil.” Tumm sighed. “Ah, well, lad,” said he, “I ’low you was born t’ be troubled by fears. God help us all!” We waited. * * * * *