He was smiling enough, but there was already the hint in the set jaws, the wary, far-looking eyes of the master mariner, the ocean battler. Her confidence ebbed; she was in an atmosphere of men's work that she could never get away from in Duncan's store, and almost timidly she heard herself asking: "Will you tell me, Captain Crudden, what was wrong with the work in the store? I thought you liked it." "Nothing wrong, Mrs. Pentle." "Then what, please?" "M-m-m." Peter revolved his cloth cap on one finger but said nothing. "One day in the shipping-room, Captain Crudden, you told me what a comfort it was for a man to be home--of the joy of the easy slippers and the warm fire, of children climbing all over you--of the warm bed every night." "That's right; I did." "No more danger, no more hardship, your sure pay every week!" "I know; I know." "Then why? Was it the work?" "The work?" Peter clearly smiled now. "Haddockin' in South Channel, Mrs. Pentle, workin' fourteen tubs--eight thousand hooks to a dory a day, an' dressin' our deckload o' fish on top o' that--three, four, yes an' five days an' nights runnin' sometimes, with no lookin' at our bunks till we filled her up--! Work? I cal'late I've done more work in South Channel fishin' many a day than in any ten days I ever saw in your store, Mrs. Pentle." "Then why, please, Captain Crudden, why?" "Why? When you went South, Mrs. Pentle, you left a man in your place to give orders." "Mr. Henston? What of him?" "Him!" Peter looked down at his cap, twirled it on a finger, looked at Mrs. Pentle, and then: "Him! Honest, Mrs. Pentle, if we had him out on the fishin'-grounds we wouldn't cut him up for bait!" Peter went back to his vessel and Mrs. Pentle to her car. "I ordered my house opened to-day. I'll run over there," she told Mr. Duncan. It was a clear day with a fresh breeze from the west. She must have seen, when she looked, the whitecaps in the harbor as her car rolled over the road. John Ferguson, up in his lookout, saw her car roll up to her gate. John could also see the reflection of the fresh fire in the grate in her den, the fresh pot of tea beside the window-seat. And no doubt she could see, as she sipped her tea, John Ferguson through an air-port of his aerie. However, the _Celia Pentle_ was sailing out to sea and John was entering her--_Celia Pentle_, Peter Crudden, Master, with the date, in his book--and was reading the entry over to himself when Mrs. Pentle came in. The harbor had grown whiter under the little crests of the tossing seas, and outside the point they were rolling yet higher and higher. "Isn't it rough weather to be sailing, John?" she asked.