She'll never float again.

It would take a tide like a flood to get her off them flats.

But when I'm aboard or putterin' around her, I'm happy--happier, I mean.

It makes me forget I'm a good-for-nothin' derelict, stranded in an old woman's job of lightkeepin'.

Ah, hum-a-day, young feller, you don't know what it is to have been somebody, and then, because you was a fool and did a fool thing, to be nothin'-- nothin'! You don't know what that is." John Brown caught his breath.