" "Never mind," said the other; "come round to my house in the
morning. We'll find him yet." So they parted with a shake of the hand, the
second mate saying that he believed he should go down to the vessel and
sleep aboard,--if he could sleep,--and murmuring at the last moment the
hope of returning the compliment, while the other walked homeward, weary
as to the flesh, but, in spite of his sympathy for Jonathan Tinker, very
elate in spirit. The truth is,--and however disgraceful to human nature,
let the truth still be told,--he had recurred to his primal satisfaction
in the man as calamity capable of being used for such and such literary
ends, and, while he pitied him, rejoiced in him as an episode of real life
quite as striking and complete as anything in fiction. It was literature
made to his hand. Nothing could be better, he mused; and once more he
passed the details of the story in review, and beheld all those pictures
which the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw
him leaping ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into
the dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed to the
pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets; he imagined the
tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have caused
in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf to all his
appeals; he saw him sitting down upon what had been his own threshold, and
waiting in a sort of bewildered patience till the neighbors should be
awake, while the noises of the streets gradually arose, and the wheels
began to rattle over the stones, and the milk-man and the ice-man came and
went, and the waiting figure began to be stared at, and to challenge the
curiosity of the passing policeman; he fancied the opening of the
neighbor's door, and the slow, cold understanding of the case; the manner,
whatever it was, in which the sailor was told that one year before his
wife had died, with her babe, and that his children were scattered, none
knew where.
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