“The Jowers family have always had a classical bent,” he told her. “All through the family there has always been a Jason or a Phidias, a Pallas Athena or Diana in between all those four-square Faiths, Prudences, and Samuels. Pretty fanciful of those old Christians.”

“Makes them like the Morosinis,” she said. “My father would love it here—we had a house full of the same kind of things from his sailing ancestors: ships’ models, a barometer, sextant, charts, the works.”

“Here, look at this,” Jason said as he got an old ledger from the bookshelf. “It’s the journal that Phidias Jowers kept when he was at sea in 1852.” He opened the ledger at random. “Listen to this. ‘October 17: Nothing to do on ship but make ourselves canes to support our dignity when we are home.’”

“That’s great, Jason. Do you still have the canes?”

“No, what we have is some scrimshaw that the captains collected among their crews when they were on a long whaling trip of a couple of years. I have a piece of it I want to give to you.”

Jason went over to the handsome desk that had once stood in an accountant’s office at the busy waterfront of New Bedford, the surface of it scarred by the writing and scratching of countless clerks toting up the fortunes made by the Cape captains on their whaling trips. He opened a drawer and got out an object, which he handed to her.

“I’ve already cleared this with my grandparents. I told them that instead of an engagement ring I wanted to give you something really special and part of our family. This is a piece of scrimshaw from the ship Alexander that was later lost in the Arctic with all hands. But before his last voyage, the Captain Jowers of that particular ship brought this back to his wife.”

Tina looked at a delicately carved comb that Jason had handed her. Its high rim was carved into the undulating figure of a unicorn, whose graceful body ended in a mermaid’s curled tail. In tiny figures on the front leg was carved “1828.”

“Jason, it’s exquisite.”

“It’s for you. You can wear it in your hair when you put it up.”

“Now we have two powerful totems for our family-to-be,” she said, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug—“this and my Calabrian tin heart.”

“Let me show you one more thing,” he said, disentangling himself from her embrace. He took the photo of a sailing ship from the wall where it was hanging with other nautical prints.

“This is the Castagna,” he said.

She took the picture from his hands and looked at the photo of a stricken ship, her masts bare and skeletal, foundering in high waves and listing badly. It was a gray and desolate sight. She looked and gave the photo back to him.