“Hulloh Wesley,” said Patsie. “Go on to the vessel, you, Martin, and tell them to make sail. I’ll follow on.” Then, when Martin had gone on ahead, “When’d you get in, Wesley?” “Just shot in.” “How’s it outside?” “Plenty of the one kind,” said Wesley. “Anybody that likes it no’west ought to be pleased. Tack, tack, tack, for every blessed foot of the way. All but put in to Shelburne once to give the crew a rest. Night and day, tack, tack, tack-- I cal’late the rudder post’s worn ’most out. Yes, sir. And never a let-up choppin’ ice--had to, to keep her from sinkin’ under us. Fourteen days from Fortune Bay that I’ve run in fifty-odd hours in the _Lucy_ with the wind to another quarter. Man, but I was beginnin’ to think the baby’d be grown a man afore I’d see him again. Well, I’m off, Patsie.” “Where to?” “Where to? Home, of course.” “Oh, home?” “Of course--the baby and the wife. Patsie, but you ought to marry. You’ll never be half a man till you marry.” “Yes? And who’ll I marry?” “Oh, some nice, fine girl. Man, but there’s whole schools of girls’d jump to marry you--whole schools, man. Heave your seine and you’d get a deck-load of ’em--or a dory-load, anyway.” “No, nor a dory-load, nor a single one caught by the gills in mistake--me that has no more learnin’ than a husky out o’ Greenland. Not me, Wesley, that can’t read my own name unless it’s wrote in plain print, and that c’n only find my way about by dead reckonin’. I c’n haul the log, and, knowin’ her course and allowin’ for tides and one thing or another that’s set down and the other things that aren’t set down, but which a man knows nat’rally----” “Yes, Patsie, and knows it better than nineteen out o’ twenty that has sextants and quadrants, and can run them--what do they call ’em--sumner lines?” “Well, maybe as well as some, Wesley. But, Wesley, girls aren’t lookin’ for the likes o’ me. Patsie Oddie’ll do to handle a vessel, maybe, and he’ll take her where any other man that sails the sea’ll take her, and he’ll bring her home again. And he’s good enough to get the fish and bring them to market, to hang out in a blow, to carry sail till all’s blue, and the like o’ that. But his style don’t go these days, Wesley. No, there may be schools o’ girls swimmin’ around somewheres, but they’re divin’ the twine when Patsie Oddie makes a set. Anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference to me if whole rafts of ’em was to come swimmin’ alongside and poke their heads up and say, ‘Come and take me.’ I’m one o’ them queer kind, Wesley, that only goes after one girl. And I set for her--and didn’t get her.”