"And I think I enjoy the misty nights, Amadeus, mm, even the nights when the moon's down as much as the others, and I've wondered why, and I think I know the reason. I enjoy them because I know that, while others are sometimes afraid of the dark, I am not. I can tell you, I can tell you surely, I'm not afraid of anything in nature. Am I speaking nonsense, I wonder? Why, before a lion my flesh would cringe and squeak, I don't doubt it, but somewhere, Amadeus, somewhere in here there's a part of me would hold calm and yield nothing even to the thought of mine own death." "Have I not alway known that, in thee?" "You have?" "Yes." "So again I learn something.... I'm tired." "Come in then and rest." "Yes, that's my wish," said Reuben, but he knelt and took Welland's hands and rested his forehead in the warmth of them. "Art thou in need of me?" "You've taught me how tomorrow is another region, so let it be--I'm not part of it tonight. I shall be forever in need of you." "But there will be years...." "When you die before me, a thing I do accept because I must, I shall be in need of you still, and will bear the need, and laugh sometimes, and work as you've taught me, and grow old--I swear I'm not afraid. I told my brother once I would sail with him to the Spice Islands. Where do children go, Amadeus?" * * * * * "Matthew, you may call me an old fart, you that's no bloody lamb yourself, but I can remember when I was a boy in Gloucester. More and more I remember it, the decent way of living there and the little houses--no easterly ever shook them houses, Matthew, tight to the ground the way they was, they a'n't got the wit to build no such way in Boston. Good, that it was. Eh, I remember that low-tide smell in my mother's kitchen, year 'round, call it a stink if you like, not me, you might say I was born to it. That was a good life--if a man could live Godfearing, not go whoring after strange inventions, listening at the Devil in his left ear." "Oh, 'vast preaching, Joey, I got no heart for it." "I a'n't preaching. Oons, I was only crowding thirteen when I first went on my father's sloop. We was to the Banks, good luck all the way, home with cod to the gun'ls. Weight of one more fish scale would've sunk her, my father said, and said it was me brung him the good luck. Me! That's a futtering laugh, that is, all the same he said it. I'll trouble you for that bottle.... Dried-up scarecrow, five good teeth in my head, you got to remember I was young one time.... I can't think how I ever come to listen at that man, and me a watchman, all done with the sea or should've been. Now don't betray me, Matthew Ledyard. Don't never let it out I said such a thing. I got no wish to die at _his_ hand, and far from home." "You look young now--being it's that dark a man can't see his fingers." "Now that's not comical, Matthew, that's not kind.... Matthew." "Yah?"