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“Whatever an’ all, by some mischance Davy Junk was fitted out with red hair, a bony face, lean, gray lips, an’ sharp an’ shifty little eyes. He’d a sly way, too, o’ smoothin’ his restless lips, an’ a mean habit o’ lookin’ askance an’ talkin’ in whispers. But ’twas his eyes that startled a stranger. Ah-ha, they was queer little eyes, sot deep in a cramped face, an’ close as evil company, each peekin’ out in distrust o’ the world; as though, ecod, the world was waitin’ for nothin’ so blithely as t’ strike Davy Junk in a mean advantage! Eyes of a wolf-pup. ‘Twas stand off a pace, with Davy, on first meetin’, an’ eye a man ’til he’d found what he wanted t’ know; an’ ’twas sure with the look of a Northern pup o’ wolf’s breedin’, no less, that he’d search out a stranger’s intention–ready t’ run in an’ bite, or t’ dodge the toe of a boot, as might chance t’ seem best. ‘Twas a thing a man marked first of all; an’ he’d marvel so hard for a bit, t’ make head an’ tale o’ the glance he got, that he’d hear never a word o’ what Davy Junk said. An’ without knowin’ why, he’d be ashamed of hisself for a cruel man. ‘God’s sake, Skipper Davy!’ thinks he; ‘you needn’t be afeared o’ me ! I isn’t goin’ t’ touch you!’ An’ afore he knowed it he’d have had quite a spurt o’ conversation with Davy, without sayin’ a word, but merely by means o’ the eyes; the upshot bein’ this: that he’d promise not t’ hurt Davy, an’ Davy’d promise not t’ hurt he.

“Thereafter–the thing bein’ settled once an’ for all–’twas plain sailin’ along o’ Davy Junk.

“‘Skipper Davy,’ says I, ‘what you afeared of?’

“He jumped. ‘Me?’ says he, after a bit. ‘Why?’

“‘Oh,’ says I, ‘I’m jus’ curious t’ know.’

“‘I’ve noticed, Tumm,’ says he, ‘that you is a wonderful hand t’ pry into the hearts o’ folk. But I ‘low you doesn’t mean no harm. That’s jus’ Nature havin’ her way. An’ though I isn’t very fond o’ Nature, I got t’ stand by her dealin’s here below. So I’ll answer you fair. Why, lad,’ says he, ‘ I isn’t afeared o’ nothin’!’

“‘You’re wary as a wolf, man!’

“‘I bet you I is !’ says he, in a flash, with his teeth shut. ‘A man’s got t’ be wary.’

“‘They isn’t nobody wants t’ hurt a mild man like you.’

“‘Pack o’ wolves in this here world,’ says he. ‘No mercy nowhere. You bites or gets bit.’

“Well, well! ‘Twas news t’ the lad that was I. ‘Who tol’ you so?’ says I.

“‘Damme!’ says he, ‘I found it out.’

“‘How?’

“‘Jus’ by livin’ along t’ be thirty-odd years.’

“‘Why, Skipper Davy,’ says I, ‘it looks t’ me like a kind an’ lovely world!’

“‘You jus’ wait ’til you’re thirty-two, like me,’ says he, ‘an’ see how you likes it.’

“‘You can’t scare me, Skipper Davy!’

“‘World’s full o’ wolves, I tells you!’

“‘Sure,’ says I, ‘you doesn’t like t’ think that, does you?’

“‘It don’t matter what I likes t’ think,’ says he. ‘I’ve gathered wisdom. I thinks as I must.’

“‘I wouldn’t believe it, ecod,’ says I, ‘an I knowed it t’ be true!’

“An’ I never did.”

Tumm chuckled softly in the dark–glancing now at the friendly stars, for such reassurance, perhaps, as he needed, and had had all his genial life.

* * * * *

“A coward or not, as you likes it, an’ make up your own minds,” Tumm went on; “but ’twas never the sea that scared un. ‘They isn’t no wind can scare me,’ says he, ‘for I isn’t bad friends with death.’ Nor was he! A beat into the gray wind–hangin’ on off a lee shore–a hard chance with the Labrador reefs in foggy weather–a drive through the ice after dark: Davy Junk, clever an’ harsh at sea, was the skipper for that, mild as he might seem ashore. ‘Latch-string out for Death, any time he chances my way, at sea,’ says he; ‘but I isn’t goin’ t’ die o’ want ashore.’ So he’d a bad name for drivin’ a craft beyond her strength; an’ ’twas none but stout hearts–blithe young devils, the most, with a wish t’ try their spirit–would ship on the Word o’ the Lord. ‘Don’t you blame me an we’re cast away,’ says Davy, in fair warnin’. ‘An you got hearts in your bellies, you keep out o’ this. This here coast,’ says he, ‘isn’t got no mercy on a man that can’t get his fish. An’ I isn’t that breed o’ man!‘ An’ so from season t’ season he’d growed well-t’-do: a drive in the teeth o’ hell, in season–if hell’s made o’ wind an’ sea, as I’m inclined t’ think–an’ the ease of a bachelor man, between whiles, in his cottage at Rickity Tickle, where he lived all alone like a spick-an’-span spinster. ‘Twas not o’ the sea he was scared. ‘Twas o’ want in an unkind world; an’ t’was jus’ that an’ no more that drove un t’ hard sailin’ an’ contempt o’ death–sheer fear o’ want in the wolf’s world that he’d made this world out t’ be in his own soul.