They didn't know until the _Lillie-Bennie_ came in that afternoon just how many of her men she was bringing back with her. They were all out on Long Wharf to watch her come in and to see who would come ashore--and who wouldn't. Women were there, and lots of children. Some of these sets of a woman and children went away with a man, holding on to him and laughing, or perhaps looking foolish to think they had ever supposed he could be dead. Others went away as they had come--maybe very still, maybe crying. There were old men who came away carrying things that had belonged to sons who weren't coming ashore. It was all a good deal like a movie--only it didn't rest you.
So he _needed_ sleep, he petulantly told things as he rubbed the back of his neck, wondered why lounges were made like that, and turned over. But instead of sleeping, he thought about Joe Cadara. They were friendly thoughts he had about Joe Cadara; much more friendly than the thoughts he was having about Ignace Silva. For one thing, Joe wasn't making any noise. Even when he was alive, Joe had made little noise. He always had his job on a vessel; he'd come up the Front street in his oilskins, turn in at his little red house, come out after a while and hoe in his garden or patch his wood-shed, sit out on the wharf and listen to what Ignace Silva and other loud-mouthed Portuguese had to say--back to his little red house. He--well, he was a good deal like the sea. It came in, it went out. On Joe Cadara's last trip in, Joe Doane met him just as he was starting out. "Well, Joe," says Joe Doane, "off again?" "Off again," said Joe Cadara, and that was about all there seemed to be to it. He could see him going down the street--short, stocky, slow, _dumb_. By dumb he meant--oh, dumb like the sea was dumb--just going on doing it. And now--
All of a sudden he couldn't _stand_ Ignace Silva. "_Hell!_" roared Joe Doane from the window, "don't you know a man's _dead_?" In an instant the only thing you could hear was the sea. In--Out--
Then he went back to his bedroom. "I'm not sleeping either," said his wife--the way people are quick to make it plain they're as bad off as the next one.
At first it seemed to be still at the Cadaras. The children had gone to sleep--so had the friends. Only one sound now where there had been many before. And that seemed to come out of the sea. You got it after a wave broke--as it was dying out. In that little let-up between an in, an out, you knew that Mrs. Cadara had not gone to sleep, you knew that Mrs. Cadara was crying because Joe Cadara was dead in the sea.