Wide Courses

Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now-the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true-that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their account-books by what I told 'em out of my head. But sometimes-not often-things come back to me, like to-day-maybe because 'tis a winter day and a gale o' wind drivin' the sea afore it in the bay below there. Things come to me then-like pictures-wind and sea and fog and the wrecks on a lee shore. In my business-but of course you know-runnin' after wrecks, from Newfoundland to Cuba, I had to be days and maybe weeks away from home-which was no harm when I had no more home than a room in a sailor's boardin'-house, and no harm later with Sarah. Even if anything happened to me, I used to feel that Sarah-that's my first wife-Sarah'd still have the two lads to hearten her and keep her busy; but 'twas different with-but there, my mind's off again....