There was a long quiet. Hugh Glynn spoke again. "Twenty years, John Snow, and you, Mrs. Snow--twenty good years I've been fishing out o' Gloucester, and in that time not much this side the western ocean I haven't laid a vessel's keel over. From Greenland to Hatteras I've fished, and many smart seamen I've been shipmates with--dory, bunk, and watch mates with in days gone by--and many a grand one of 'em I've known to find his grave under the green-white ocean, but never a smarter, never an abler fisherman than your boy Arthur. Boy and man I knew him, and, boy and man, he did his work. I thought you might like to hear that from me, John Snow. And not much more than that can I say now, except to add, maybe, that when the Lord calls, John Snow, we must go, all of us. The Lord called and Arthur went. He had a good life before him--if he'd lived. He'd 've had his own vessel soon--could've had one before this--if he'd wanted. But 'No,' he says, 'I'll stay with you yet a while, Captain Hugh.' He loved me and I loved him. 'I'll stay with you yet a while, Captain Hugh,' he says, but, staying with me, he was lost, and if I was old enough to have a grown son o' my own, if 'twas that little lad who lived only long enough to teach me what it is to have hope of a fine son and then to lose him, if 'twas that little lad o' mine grown up, I doubt could I feel it more, John Snow." John Snow let slip his book and stood up, and for the first time looked fair at Hugh Glynn. "We know, Captain Glynn," John Snow said, "and I'm thanking you now. It's hard on me, hard on us all--our only son, captain--our only child. But, doubtless, it had to come. Some goes young and some goes old. It came to him maybe earlier than we ever thought for, or he thought for, no doubt, but--it come. And what you have told us, captain, is something for a man to be hearing of his son--and to be hearing it from you. And only this very night, with the word of you come home, my mind was hardening against you, Captain Glynn, for no denying I've heard hard things even as I've heard great things of you. But now I've met you, I know they mixed lies in the telling, Captain Glynn. And as for Arthur--" John Snow stopped. "As for Arthur"--'twas something to listen to, the voice of Hugh Glynn then, so soft there was almost no believing it--"as for Arthur, John Snow, he went as all of us will have to go if we stop long enough with the fishing." "Ay, no doubt. As you may go yourself, captain?" "As I expect to go, John Snow. To be lost some day--what else should I look forward to?" "A black outlook, captain." "Maybe, maybe. And yet a man's death at the last." "So 'tis, captain--so 'tis."