He talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men, and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese.

Then he conferred with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head.

He coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know "what in thunder that man was after, anyhow." He prowled into the Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman's Widow and Orphan Aid Society within the city limits.
They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution's record, and Cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to Mrs.Cheyne.
She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point--a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered, and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make Welsh rare-bits if it felt hungry.

On the second morning of her stay Mrs.Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast.
"They're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly." "That isn't simpleness, mama," he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung.

"It's the other thing, that we--that I haven't got." "It can't be," said Mrs.Cheyne, quietly.