In the morning he was still there walking the quarter--less mournful, perhaps, but in a savage humor. Men who had sailed with him for years did not know what to make of it. There was the incident of the big bark, a good part of whose sail had evidently been blown away and the most of what was left tied up. Under the smallest possible canvas she was heading close up to the wind and making small way of it. “Why the divil don’t they heave her to entirely!” snapped Patsie. “Look at her, will ye, the size of her and the sail she’s carryin’, and then the size of this little one and the sail _she’s_ carryin’.” The men chopping ice on the bark’s deck stood transfixed as they saw the little _Delia_ sweep by. Under her four lowers, and going like the blizzard itself was she, with a big bearded man, wrapped to his eyes in a great-coat, waving his arms and swearing across the white-topped seas at them. “And did you never see a vessel afore?” barked Patsie. “Well, look your fill, then, and get our name while you’re about it, and report us, will you?--the _Delia Corrigan_, Gloucester, and doin’ her fifteen knots good, will you?” And then, turning away to his own: “The likes o’ some of ’em oughtn’t be allowed a cable-length off shore. Their mothers ought to be spoke to about it. There’s a fellow there ought to be going along about his business--and look at him, hove to! Waitin’ for it to moderate! Lord, think of it--as fine a day as this and waitin’ for it to moderate! The sun shinin’, and as nice a green sea as ever a man’d want to look at! It’s the like o’ them that loses vessels and men--makes widows and orphans.” So much for his crew. Then a dark look ahead and beyond the green and white seas that were sweeping by the _Delia’s_ bow, while the bearded lips moved wrathfully. “Ten men lost, blast him! And drinkin’ wine, maybe, in Saint Peer now, if we c’d only see him! Yes, and he’ll come back to Gloucester with a divil of a fine story to tell. ’Tis a hero he’ll make himself out to be. Looked in the face o’ death and escaped, he’ll say--blast him!” * * * * * Sable Island--sometimes, and not too extravagantly, termed the Graveyard of the Atlantic--is set among shoal waters that afford the best of feeding-ground for the particular kinds of fish that Gloucestermen most desire--halibut, cod, haddock, and what not--and so to its shoal waters do the fishermen come to trawl or hand-line. Lying about east and west, a flat quarter moon in shape, is Sable Island. Two long bars, extending north-westerly and north-easterly, make of it a full deep crescent. Nowhere is the fishing so good (or so dangerous) as close in on these bars, and the closer in and the shoaler the water, the better the fishing. There are a few men alive in Gloucester who have been in close enough to see the surf break on the bare bar; but that was in soft weather and the bar to windward, and they invariably got out in a hurry.