Captain Hap had reached the years when a trip to the Grand Banks is hard work, dory fishing off the coast a doubtful pleasure, and even yachting in an industrial capacity is a burden. He had a quick eye, a kind heart, a soft foot, and the gentle touch strangely enough sometimes to be found in hands that have hauled in the cod-line and the main-sheet for fifty years. In short, Captain Hap made an excellent nurse, and sometimes served his day and generation in that capacity.

Bayard lay on the straw mattress under the photograph of Leonardo’s Christ, and thoughtfully watched Captain Hap. It was the first day that conversation had presented itself to the sick man in the light of a privilege; and he worked up to the luxury slowly through intervals of delicious silence.

“Captain Hap, I am quite well now—as you see. I must speak next Sunday.”

“Call it Sunday arter,” suggested Captain Hap.

“It was only a scratch on the head—wasn’t it, Cap’n? And this cold. It is a bad cold.”

“For a cold, yes, sir; quite a cold. You see, it anchored onto your lungs; there air folks that call such colds inflammation. That there cut on the head was a beautiful cut, sir; it healed as healthy as a collie dog’s, or a year-old baby’s. We’ll have you round, now, sir, before you can say Cap’n Hap!”

“Cap’n Hap?”

“Well, sir?”

“You’ve done something for me—I don’t know just what; whether it’s my life that’s saved, or only a big doctor’s bill.”

“Ask Mrs. Granite, sir, and that there handy girl of hers; we’re all in it. You kept the whole crew on deck for a few days. You was a sick man—for a spell.”

“Captain, I am a well man now; and there’s one thing I will know. I’ve asked you before. I’ve asked when I was out of my head, and I’ve asked when I was in it, and I’ve never got an answer yet. Now I’m going to have it.”

“Be you?” said Captain Hap. His small, dark, soft eyes twinkled gently; but they took on lustre of metal across the iris; as if a spark of iron or flint had hit them.

“It is time,” said Bayard, “that I knew all about it.”

“Meaning”—began the captain softly.

“Meaning everything,” said Bayard impatiently. “The whole story. It’s the best thing for me. I dream about it so.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed your dreams was bad,” replied the nurse soothingly.

“Captain, where’s the Clara Em?”

“To the bottom,” responded the fisherman cheerfully.

“And the men? The crew? Her captain? Job Slip? How many were drowned? Out with it, Cap’n! I’m not very easy to deceive, when I’m in my senses. You may as well tell me everything.”

“Mebbe I mought,” observed the captain. “Sometimes it’s the best way. There wasn’t but one of ’em drowned, sir,—more’s the pity.”

Bayard uttered an exclamation of shocked rebuke and indignation; but the old captain sat rocking to and fro in Mrs. Granite’s best wooden rocking-chair, with the placid expression of those who rest from their labors, and are not afraid that their works should follow them.

“Fellars that’ll take a new fisherman—a regular dandy like that—and smash her onto Ragged Rock, bein’ in the condition those fellars were, ain’t worth savin’!” said the seaman severely. “Your treasurer here, J. B. S. Bond, he says last time he come to see you, says he: ’The whole of ’em warn’t worth our minister!’”

“I must speak to Mr. Bond about that,” said the young man with a clerical ring in his voice. “It wasn’t a proper thing for him to say.—Who was drowned, Captain Hap?”

“Only Johnny,” replied the captain indifferently. “He was born drunk, Johnny was; his father was so before him; and three uncles. He ain’t any great loss.”

“Did you see Johnny’s mother, Captain,—on the cliff, there,—that night?”

“I didn’t take notice of her particular,” replied Captain Hap comfortably. “I see several women round. There’s usually a good many on the rocks, such times.”

“Well, you’ve got me,” said Bayard with a smiling sigh. “I’m a little too weak to play the parson on you yet, you Christian heathen—you stony-hearted minister of mercy!”

“Sho!” said the captain. “’Tain’t fair to call names. I can’t hit back; on a sick man.”

“Very well,” said Bayard, sinking back on his thin, small pillows. “Just go ahead and tell me the whole business, then. Where is Job Slip?”

“Off haddockin’.”

“Sober?”

“So far. He’s come over here half a dozen times, but the doctor wouldn’t let him up to see you. His wife come, too. That woman, she’d kiss the popples[1] underneath your rubber-boots.”

“Where’s Johnny’s mother?”

“They took her to the Widders’ Home yesterday. Some of ’em screeches all the way over. Folks say she never said nothing.”

“What became of all those men—the crew and captain?”

“Why, they waited till ebb, just as I told you. Then they come ashore, the whole twelve on ’em. The crew they come first, and Cap’n Salt—that’s Joe Salt—he follered after. There was some folks waited round to see ’em off—but it come up dreadful thick, spite of the breeze; so thick it had stems to it. You couldn’t see the vessel, not a line of her, and ’twas kinder cold and disagree’ble. So most the folks went home. But they got ashore, every man-jack of ’em alive.”

“Thank God!” breathed the sick man.

“Well,” said the captain, “that’s a matter of opinion. You’ve talked enough, sir.”

“Just one more, Cap’n Hap! Just this! This I’ve got to know. What was it—exactly—that those men did? How did they come to be in such a plight? How in the world—that beautiful new boat—and an intelligent officer at the helm, Captain—how on earth did it come about?”

“The Clara Em was sot to sail,” replied Captain Hap calmly. “That’s about all. Her owners they were sot, and her cap’n he was sot. It was the sotness done it. They’d make the market first, you see, if they got the start—and it’s a job gettin’ your crew aboard, you know. Anything to get your crew. Drunk or sober, that isn’t the point. Drunker they be, the easier to ship ’em. See? Get your crew. Get ’em anyhow! They was all full, every mother’s son of ’em. Cap’n Joe, he was the only sober soul aboard, and that’s the truth, and he knew it when he set sail. Yes—oh, yes. The storm was comin’. He knew it was breezin’ up.—Oh, yes, of course. So he got some sober men off the wharves to help him at the sheets, and he put up every stitch. Yes, sir! Every stitch he had! And out he sails—with thirteen drunken men aboard—him at the wheel, and not a hand to help him. That’s the English on’t. The boat was d——drunk, beg your pardon, Parson! He driv right out the harbor, and it was a sou’easter, and blew quite a breeze o’ wind, and you see he tacked, and set in, and he was tackin’ out, and it had breezed up consider’ble more’n he expected. So he drove right on the reef. That’s about it.”

“But why didn’t he take in sail?”

“How was he goin’ to do it with that crew? Why, he couldn’t leave the wheel to tie a reef-point.”

“But there was his anchor.”

“Did you ever try to heave one of them big anchors? It takes four men.”

“What a situation! Horrible!”

“Wall, yes; it was inconvenient—him at the wheel, and a dead drunk crew, thirteen of ’em, below. Why, they was too drunk to know whether they drowned or not.”

“Can the boat be raised? Will she ever be good for anything?”

“Kindlin’ wood,” remarked the captain dryly.

“Captain Hap,” asked Bayard feebly, “do things like this often happen?”

“Sometimes.”

“Isn’t this an extreme case?”

“Well, it don’t happen every day.”

“But things of this kind—do they occur often? Do you know of other cases?”

“Windover don’t have the monopoly of ’em by no means,” mused Captain Hap. “There was the Daredevil over on South Shore. She was launched about a year ago. She went on a trial spin one day, and everybody aboard was pretty jolly. They put all their canvas up to show her off. It was a nor’wester that day, and they driv her right before the wind. She jest plunged bows down, and driv straight to the bottom, the Daredevil did. Some said it was her name. But, Lord, rum done it.”

“What do people say—how do they take it here in Windover, this case of the Clara Em? Weren’t they indignant?”

“Wall, the insurance folks was mad.”

“No, but the people—the citizens—the Christian people—how do they feel about it?”

“Oh, they’re used to it,” said Captain Hap.

Bayard turned wearily on his hard bed. He did not answer. He looked out and towards the sea. The engraved Guido over the study-table between the little windows regarded him. St. Michael was fighting with his dragon still.

“He never got wounded,” thought the sick man.

“Captain,” he said presently, “these rooms seem to be full of—pleasant things. Who sent them all?”

“Them geraniums and other greens? Oh, the ladies of the mission, every mother’s daughter of ’em, married and single, young an’ old. Jellies? Lord! Yes. Jellies enough to stock a branch grocery. What there is in the female mind, come to sickness, that takes it out in jellies”—mused the captain.

“I’ve taken solid comfort out of this screen,” said Bayard gratefully. “I did suffer with the light before. Who sent that?”

“That’s Jane Granite’s idee,” replied the captain. “She seems to be a clever girl. Took an old clo’es-horse and some rolls of wall paper they had in the house. They give fifteen cents a roll for that paper. It’s kinder tasty, don’t you think? ’Specially that cherubim with blue wings settin’ on a basket of grapes.”

“That reminds me. I see—some Hamburg grapes,” said Bayard, with the indifferent air of a man who purposely puts his vital question last. He pointed to a heaping dish of hothouse fruit and other delicacies never grown in Windover.

The captain replied that those come from the Boston gentleman; they’d kept coming all along. He thought she said there was a card to ’em by the name of—

“Worcester?” asked the sick man eagerly.

That was it. Worcester.

“He hasn’t been here, has he? The gentleman hasn’t called to see me?”

The nurse shook his head, and Bayard turned his own away. He would not have believed that his heart would have leaped like that at such a little thing. He felt like a sick boy, sore and homesick with the infinite longing for the love of kin. It was something to know that he was not utterly forgotten. He asked for one of the Boston pears, and ate it with pathetic eagerness.

“There’s been letters,” said the captain; “but the doctor’s orders are agin your seeing ’em this week. There’s quite a pile. You see, its bein’ in the papers let folks know.”

“In the papers! What in the papers?”

“What do you s’pose?” asked the captain proudly. “A fellar don’t swim out in the undertow off Ragged Rock to save a d—— fool of a drunken fisherman every day.”

“I’ll be split and salted!” added the fisherman-nurse, “if we didn’t have to have a watchman here three nights when you was worst, to keep the reporters off ye. Thirteen Windover fellars volunteered for the job, and they wouldn’t none of ’em take a cent for it. They said they’d set up forty nights for you.”

“For me?” whispered the sick man. His eyes filled for the first time since the Clara Em went ashore on Ragged Rock. Something new and valuable seemed to have entered life as suddenly as the comfort of kin and the support of friends, and that bright, inspiriting atmosphere, which one calls the world, had gone from him. He had not expected that precious thing—the love of those for whom we sacrifice ourselves. He felt the first thrill of it with gratitude touching to think of, in so young and lovable a man, with life and all its brilliant and beautiful possibilities before him.

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It was an April night, and sea and sky were soft in Windover.

A stranger stood in Angel Alley hesitating at a door, which bore above its open welcome these seven words:—

“The Church of the Love of Christ.”

“What goes on here?” the gentleman asked of a bystander.

“Better things than ever went on here before,” was the reply. “They’ve got a man up there. He ain’t no dummy in a minister’s choker.”

The stranger put another question.

“Well,” came the cordial answer, “he has several names in Angel Alley: fisherman’s friend is one of the most pop’lar. Some calls him the gospel cap’n. There’s those that prefers jest to say, the new minister. There’s one name he don’t go by very often, and that’s the Reverend Bayard.”

“He has no right to the title,” murmured the stranger.

“What’s that?” interposed the other quickly. The stranger made no reply.

“Some call him the Christ’s Rest man,” proceeded the bystander affably.

“That is a singular—ah—remarkable cognomen. How comes that?”

“Why, you see, the old name for this place was Seraph’s Rest—it was the wust hell in Angel Alley—see? before he took it up an’ sot to prayin’ in it. So folks got it kinder mixed with the Love of Christ up on that sign there. Some calls the place Christlove for short. I heerd an I-talian call him the Christman t’other day.”

The stranger took off his hat by instinct, it seemed unconsciously; glanced at the inscription above the door, and passed thoughtfully up the steep, bare stairs into the hall or room of worship.

The service was already in progress, for the hour was late, and the gentleman observed with an air of surprise that the place was filled. He looked about for a comfortable seat, but was forced to content himself with standing-room in the extreme rear of the hall. Crowds overflowed the wooden settees, brimmed into the aisles, and were packed, in serried rows as tight as codfish in a box, against the wall. The simile of the cod was forced upon the visitor’s mind in more senses than one. A strong whiff of salt fish assailed him on every side. This was varied by reminiscences of glue factories, taking unmistakable form. An expression of disgust crossed the stranger’s face; it quickly changed into that abstraction which indicates the presence of moral emotion too great for attention to trifles.

The usual New England religious audience was not to be seen in the Church of the Love of Christ in Angel Alley. The unusual, plainly, was. The wealth and what the “Windover Topsail” called the society of Windover were sparsely represented on those hard settees. The clean, sober faces of respectable families were out in good force; these bore the earnest, half-perplexed, wholly pathetic expression of uninfluential citizens who find themselves suddenly important to and responsible for an unpopular movement; a class of people who do not get into fiction or history, and who deserve a quality of respect and sympathy which they do not receive; the kind of person who sets us to wondering what was the personal view of the situation dully revolving in the minds of Peter and the sons of Zebedee when they put their nets to dry upon the shores of Galilee, and tramped up and down Palestine at the call of a stronger and diviner mind, wondering what it meant, and how it would all end.

These good people, not quite certain whether their own reputations were injured or bettered by the fact, sat side by side with men and women who are not known to the pews of churches. The homeless were there, and the hopeless, the sinning, the miserable, the disgraced, the neglected, the “rats” of the wharves, and the outcasts of the dens.

The stranger stood packed in, elbow to elbow between an Italian who served the country of his adoption upon the town waterworks, and a dark-browed Portuguese sailor. American fishermen, washed and shaven, in their Sunday clothes, filled the rear seats. Against the wall, lines of rude, red faces crowded like cattle at a spring; men of the sea and the coast, men without homes or characters; that uninteresting and dangerous class which we dismiss in two idle words as the “floating population.” Some of these men were sober; some were not; others were hovering midway between the two conditions: all were orderly, and a few were listening with evidences of emotion to the hymn, in which by far the greater portion of the audience joined. A girl wearing a Tam o’ Shanter and a black fur cape, and singing in a fine, untrained contralto, held her hymn-book over the settee to the Italian.

“Come, Tony! Pass it along!” she whispered, “I can get on without it. Make ’em pile in and sing along the wall, there!”

With rude and swelling cadence the fishermen sang:—

“I need Thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord.”

Their voices and their hearts rose high on one of those plaintive popular melodies of which music need never be ashamed:—

“I need Thee, oh, I need Thee,
Every hour I need Thee;
Oh, bless me now, my Saviour”....

The stranger, who had the appearance of a religious man, joined in the chorus heartily; he shared the book which the girl had given to the Italian, who came in a bar too late, and closed the stanza on a shrill solo,—

“I co—home to thee.”

This little accident excited a trifling smile; but it faded immediately, for the preacher had arisen. His appearance was greeted with a respect which surprised the stranger. The audience at once became grave even to reverence; the Italian cuffed a drunken Portuguese who was under the impression that responses to the service were expected of him; the girl in the Tam o’ Shanter shook a woman who giggled beside her. A fisherman whispered loudly,—

“Shut up there! The parson ain’t quite tough yet. Keep it quiet for him! Shut up there, along the wall!”

There is nothing like a brave deed to command the respect of seafaring men. Emanuel Bayard, when he plunged into the undertow after Job Slip’s drunken, drowning body, swam straight into the heart of Windover. A rough heart that is, but a warm one, none warmer on the freezing coast, and sea-going Windover had turned the sunny side of its nature, and taken the minister in. The standards by which ignorant men judge the superior classes—their superb indifference to any scale of values but their own—deserve more study than they receive.

It had never occurred to Bayard, who was only beginning to learn to understand the nature of his material, that he had become in three weeks the hero of the wharves and the docks, the romance of Angel Alley, the admiring gossip of the Banks and Georges’, the pride and wonder of the Windover fishermen. Quite unconscious of this “sea-change,” wrought by one simple, manly act upon his popularity, he rose to address the people. His heart was full of what he was going to say. He gave one glance the length of the hall. He saw the crowds packed by the door. He saw the swaying nets, ornamented with globes and shells and star-fish, after the fashion of the fishing-town; these decorations softened the bare walls of the audience-room. He saw the faces of the fishermen lifting themselves to him and blurring together in a gentle glow. They seemed to him, as a great preacher once said of his audience, like the face “of one impressive, pleading man,” whose life hung upon his words. He felt as if he must weigh them in some divine scales into which no dust or chaff of weakness or care for self could fall.

Something of this high consciousness crept into his face. He stood for a moment silent; his beautiful countenance, thin from recent suffering, took on the look by which a man represses noble tears.

Suddenly, before he had spoken a word, a storm of applause burst out—shook the room from wall to wall—and roared like breakers under his astonished feet. He turned pale with emotion, but the fishermen thundered on. He was still so weak that this reception almost overcame him, and involuntarily he stretched out both his hands. At the gesture the noise sank instantly; and silence, in which the sigh of the saddest soul in the room might have been heard, received the preacher.

His sensitive face, melted and quivering, shone down upon them tenderly. Men in drunken brawls, and men in drowning seas, and women in terrible temptation, remembered how he looked that night when the safe and the virtuous and the comfortable had forgotten.

The stranger back by the door put his hat before his face.

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