He stopped to look over his shoulder at me. "Simon, boy, I mind the days when there was no stopping the songs in me. Rolling to my lips o' themselves they would come, like foam to the crests of high seas. The days of a man's youth, Simon! All I knew of a gale of wind was that it stirred the fancies in me. It's the most wonderful thing will ever happen you, Simon." "What is, skipper?" "Why, the loving a woman and she loving you, and you neither knowing why, nor maybe caring." "No woman loves me, skipper." "She will, boy--never a fear." He took to the hauling, and soon again to the singing: "My lad comes running down the street, And what says he to me? Says he, 'O dadda, dadda, And you're back again from sea! "'And did you ketch a great big fish And bring him home to me? O dadda, dadda, take me up And toss me high!' says he. "My love looks out on the stormy morn, Her thoughts are on the sea. She says, ''Tis wild upon the Banks,' And kneels in prayer for me." "'O Father, hold him safe!' she prays, 'And----'" * * * * * "There's one, Simon!" he called. A bad sea he meant. They had been coming and going, coming and going, rolling under and past us, and so far no harm; but this was one more wicked to look at than its mates. So I dropped the coiling lines and, with the oar already to the becket in the stern, whirled the dory's bow head on. The sea carried us high and far and, passing, left the dory deep with water, but no harm in that so she was still right side up. "A good job, Simon," said Hugh Glynn the while we were bailing. "Not too soon and not too late." That was the first one. More followed in their turn; but always the oar was handy in the becket, and it was but to whirl bow or stern to it with the oar when it came, not too soon to waste time for the hauling but never, of course, too late to save capsizing; and bailing her out, if need be, when it was by. Our trawl was in, our fish in the waist of the dory, and we lay to our roding line and second anchor, so we might not drift miles to loo'ard while waiting for the vessel to pick us up. We could see the vessel--to her hull, when to the top of a sea we rose together; but nothing of her at all when into the hollows we fell together. She had picked up all but the dory next to wind'ard of us. We would be the last, but before long now she would be to us. "When you drop Simon and me, go to the other end of the line and work back. Pick Simon and me up last of all," Hugh Glynn had said to Saul, and I remember how Saul, standing to the wheel, looked down over the taffrail and said, "Simon and you last of all," and nodded his head as our dory fell away in the vessel's wake.