"Who? What! Yourself, Bess? Could you make where they are--Caplin Cove--alone, and by night--and tell 'em what's in the wind, so they'll be aboard in time, while I go and hurry after Tim Lacy to the vessel at Half-Tide Harbor? Could a woman like a man well enough to do that?" "Well, women likes men sometimes, Sammie." "God bless you, Bess, of course. And sometimes, too, a man likes--But, Bess!" She lay swaying in the hollow of his arm. "Bessie!"--and oh, the nearness of him! "I don't want to fool you, girl--we _was_ carryin' sail the night your brother Simon was lost. A livin' gale, and she buttin' into it with a whole mains'l--you won't hold that agin' me?" "How could I, Sammie? A man that's a man at all is bound to carry sail at times. And fishermen, sail-carryin' or no sail-carryin', they comes and goes." "Ay, girl, and sometimes goes quicker than they comes. Oh, Bess, the fine men I've been shipmates with! And now 'twould take a chart of all the banks 'tween Hatteras and Greenland to find out where the bones of the half of 'em lie." "But do go now, Sammie." She snuggled closer to him. "Have a care now, for I'm lovin' you now, Sammie." "Ay, you are. And I'm lovin' you, Bess. But your father, Bess; he'll put you out." "Well, if he do----" "If he do, Bess, you know who'll be waitin' for you." "Ay, I do. An' I'll come to you, too, no fear, boy. But no matter about John Lowe now, boy, so you won't forget me, Sammie." "Never a forget, Bessie." "Then hold me again, Sammie, afore we part. And don't forget--never a man afore did I like like I likes you, Sammie." * * * * * And Bess had gone and delivered her message to Leary's crew at Caplin Cove. "Be all hands aboard afore dawn and have her ready to sail," was Bessie's message, and with that put off for home in her father's little sloop. There had been stars on her run over, bright, cheerful stars that made you overlook the frost in the air, but no stars now. But that was the way of the weather in the bay. In the lee of Shingle Spit it was calm enough, and so, for all the boom of the sea outside, Bess had time for revery. A gran' figur' of a man, Sammie Leary. Strong he was. Ay, strong. An' not stern. Lord knows, there was enough of that to home. No, no, saft-like same as Sammie--that was the kind for a woman to love. And Sammie now. Out under the shadow of the porch he had said: "You're the lass for me." Ay, he did. But so many talked like that and meant naught by it, but took your kiss and your heart wi' the kiss and sailed away, and you never again see 'em, mayhap. There was Jessie Mann, and--Oh, no matter them. Sammie was none o' their kind o' men. An' yet--there were those who said that one like Sammie never made a good husband. Sailed wi' too free a sheet, he did. An' yet, did ever a vessel get anywhere without a free sheet at times?