CHAPTER XII
SPRING
It was in April that the news had come. The bottle was tossing, God knows where; the thirteenth nick had just been cut in the eighth trunk of Ben's tree calendar; and Sally was making her two-hundred and fifty-seventh trip—since that night under the Light—to the postoffice, each pilgrimage a Via Dolorosa now. Again on the top step she paused to scan the horizon, but her gaze was stopped midway by a crowd gathered in front of Comby's drugstore. She recognized its focus, a strangely gesturing courier from the sea, in tattered blouse and water-stained trousers. It was Martin Rogers, the ship s carpenter of the missing Provincetown.
Over the nodding heads of his audience he caught sight of her half eager, half-fearful look, and stopped his dramatic recital in embarrassment.
Straight to him she went.
"Where is Ben?" was all she said.
Neither in the serene sky nor in the transfixed faces of the crowd could the distressed mariner find an answer. He fumbled at his pockets, and dug the toes of his shoes, almost petrified with water, between the pavement cracks,
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