There was half a dozen steamboat firms telegraphin' and telephonin' the morning after that storm, and I had to leave without waitin' till she got home. There was a wreck off Cape Cod, and that kept me away a week, and I was hurryin' back by way of Boston. And I saw him--me hurryin' up Atlantic Avenue to take the train and him headed for the docks. I hailed him. There was a rumor--'twas in the papers--that I'd gone down with the wreck I'd been workin' on off Cape Cod--Chatham way--but of course no one who knew me well believed it. But he must've believed it, for--"What, you!" he says--not even puttin' in the "Captain" that he never before forgot. I missed that little word from him--and he didn't look at me the same--him that had always such a friendly way with me. He seemed to be in a great hurry, and so I left him without more talk. He did not even tell me that the _Rameses_ was in the harbor and he leavin' on her, but the thought of that came later. I had to stop off at Newport, to get things started for another wreck there, and that took me the rest of that day and the next, and then I was all ready to take the night boat for New York, but my oldest boy came hurryin' down the dock to me, and an old lady--no--not so old, but lookin' old--with him. And they told me how the _Rameses_, that had left Boston the morning before, 'd been wrecked off Gay Head durin' the night and sunk; and this was his mother, and she wanted me to go to the wreck right away and see if I could find and bring up his body. I wanted to go home--a week of days and nights--and I was tired, too, and not easy to tire me in those days, but I thought of him and the trust he had in the skipper that didn't know his business, and I looks at my boy and at his mother, and Sarah's face came to me; and who's to gainsay a woman whose son lies drowned? So my boy and me we put out that night and was there next morning in our big wreckin'-tug. 'Twas a cold day, but clear, only there was a big sea runnin', makin' it dangerous, everybody said, to be lyin' alongside her. And, I suppose because o' that, my boy wanted to do the divin', but 'twas me that went down and fastened the chains so she wouldn't slip off into the deep water; and then I came up to rest, and it was while I was up restin' that the chains slipped and she slid off and on to a ledge twenty fathoms down. Twenty fathoms is deep water for divin'--but one or two 'd been that deep before, and what one man has done another can do--and I'd promised the mother to bring her son home to her.