He led me to a daybed, suggested I lie down, and left to secure the door and fetch me something to eat.
I removed my boots, but my feet were so filthy that I put them back on again. If I’d been drifting about very long, I wouldn’t be dirty. I didn’t want to give away my story, so I drew a blanket that was there over me and leaned hack, really resting.
Jopin returned shortly with a pitcher of water, a pitcher of beer, a great slice of beef, and half a loaf of bread upon a square wooden tray. He swept clear the top of a small table, which he then kicked into a position beside the couch. Then he set the tray down on it and bade me eat and drink.
I did. I stuffed myself. I glutted myself. I ate everything in sight. I emptied both pitchers.
Then I felt tremendously tired. Jopin nodded when he saw it come over me, and he told me to go to sleep. Before I knew it, I had.
When I awakened, it was night time and I felt considerably better than I had in many weeks. I got to my feet and retraced my earlier route and departed the building. It was chilly out there, but the sky was crystal clear and there seemed to be a million stars. The lens at the top of the tower blazed at my back, then went dark, blazed, then went dark. The water was cold, but I just had to cleanse myself. I bathed and washed my clothing and wrung it out. I must have spent an hour doing that. Then I went back to the lighthouse, hung my clothes over the back of an old chair to dry out, crawled beneath the blanket, slept again.
In the morning, when I awoke, Jopin was already up. He prepared me a hearty breakfast, and I treated it the same way as I had the dinner of the previous evening. Then I borrowed a razor, a mirror, and a pair of scissors and gave myself a shave and a sort of haircut. I bathed again afterward, and when I donned my salty, stiff, clean garments I felt almost human again.
Jopin stared at me when I returned from the sea and said, “You look kinda familiar, fella,” and I shrugged.
“Now tell me about your wreck.”
So I did. Out of whole cloth. What a disaster I detailed! Down to the snapping of the mainmast, yet.
He patted me on the shoulder and poured me a drink. He lit the cigar he had given me.
“You just rest easy here,” he told me. “I’ll take you ashore any time you like, or I’ll signal you a passing ship if you see one you recognize.”
I took him up on his offered hospitality. It was too much of a lifesaver not to. I ate his food and drank his drinks and let him give me a clean shirt which was too big for him. It had belonged to a friend of his who’d drowned at sea.
I stayed with him for three months, as I recovered my strength. I helped him around the place—tending the light on nights when he felt like getting smashed, and cleaning up all the rooms in the house—even to the extent of painting two of them and replacing five cracked windowpanes—and watching the sea with him on stormy nights.
He was apolitical, I learned. He didn’t care who reigned in Amber. So far as he was concerned, the whole bloody crew of us were rotten. So long as he could tend his lighthouse and eat and drink of good food and brew, and consider his nautical charts in peace, he didn’t give half a damn what happened ashore. I came to be rather fond of him, and since I knew something of old charts and maps also, we spent many a good evening correcting a few. I had sailed far into the north many years ago, and I gave him a new chart based on my recollections of the voyage. This seemed to please him immensely, as did my description of those waters.