"So my mother's dead," said the big man. "So my mother's dead. Ah, well, all her troubles are over. It's forty years since I saw her, and she the strapping woman. And in forty years she must have had a power of trouble." "She looked unco peaceful, honest man." "The dead are always peaceful, decent wee fellow. So my mother's dead. Well, that alters things." "You'll be staying at home then, honest man?" "I'll be going back to sea, decent wee fellow. I had intended to stay at home and be with the old woman in her last days, the like of a pilot that brings a ship in, as you might say. But it would have been queer and hard. Herself, now, had no word of English?" "Old Annapla McFee spoke only the Gaidhlig." "And the Gaidhlig is gone from me, as the flower goes from the fruit-tree. And there could have been little conversation betwixt us, she remembering fairs and dances and patterns in the Gaidhlig, and me thinking of strange foreign ports in the English tongue. Poor company I'd have been for an old woman and she making her last mooring. I'd have been little assistance. Forty years between us--strange ports and deep soundings. Oh, we'd have been making strange." "Ah, maybe not, honest man." "How could it have been any other way, decent wee lad? She'd have been the strange, pitiful old cummer to me, who minded her the strapping woman, and I'd have been a queer bearded man to her, who minded me only as a wee fellow, the terror of the glen. People change every day, and there's a lot of change in forty years. "And, besides, it would have been gey hard on me, wee lad. The grape and spade would be clumsy to my hands, there being no life to them after the swinging spars. And my fingers, used to splicing rope, would not have the touch for milking a cow. And I'd feel lost, wee fellow, some day and me plowing a field, to see a fine ship on the waters, out of Glasgow port for the Plate maybe, and to think of it off the Brazils, and the pampero coming quick as a thrown knife, and me not aboard to help shorten sail or take a trick at the wheel. And it might have made me ugly toward the old woman. And I wouldn't have had that at all, at all.... But she's finished the voyage, poor cummer.... And it's a high ship and a capstan shanty for me again ... all's well...." "It's a wonder, honest man, you wouldn't stay on land at peace and you forty years at sea." "Well, it's a queer thing, decent wee fellow, but once you get the salt water in your blood you're gone. A queer itching is in your veins. It's like a disease. It is so. It spoils you for the fire on winter nights and for the hay-fields in the month o' June. And it puts a great bar between you and the folk o' dry land, such as there is between a fighting man and a cowardly fellow. It's the salt in the blood, I think; but you'd have to ask a doctor about that.