first only we three stood alone, for a long time, watching you

coming down to us, and feeling the breeze drop to a calm almost;
but afterwards others, too, rose, one after another, and by-and-by

I had all my crew behind me. I turned round and said to them that
they could see the ship was coming our way, but in this small

breeze she might come too late after all, unless we turned to and
tried to keep the brig afloat long enough to give you time to save

us all. I spoke like that to them, and then I gave the command to
man the pumps."

He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself to
the handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for

a moment, looking at each other dubiously before they followed him.
"He! he! he!" He broke out into a most unexpected, imbecile,

pathetic, nervous little giggle. "Their hearts were broken so!
They had been played with too long," he explained apologetically,

lowering his eyes, and became silent.
Twenty-five years is a long time - a quarter of a century is a dim

and distant past; but to this day I remember the dark-brown feet,
hands, and faces of two of these men whose hearts had been broken

by the sea. They were lying very still on their sides on the
bottom boards between the thwarts, curled up like dogs. My boat's

crew, leaning over the looms of their oars, stared and listened as
if at the play. The master of the brig looked up suddenly to ask

me what day it was.
They had lost the date. When I told him it was Sunday, the 22nd,

he frowned, making some mentalcalculation, then nodded twice sadly
to himself, staring at nothing.

His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful. Had it not
been for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes, whose unhappy,

tired glance every moment sought his abandoned, sinking brig, as if
it could find rest nowhere else, he would have appeared mad. But

he was too simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity
which alone can bear men unscathed in mind and body through an

encounter with the deadlyplayfulness of the sea or with its less
abominable fury.

Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant
ship growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued

men and the dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in
the large and placidembrace of its quietness, half lost in the

fair haze, as if in a dream of infinite and tender clemency. There
was no frown, no wrinkle on its face, not a ripple. And the run of

the slight swell was so smooth that it resembled the graceful
undulation of a piece of shimmering gray silk shot with gleams of

green. We pulled an easy stroke; but when the master of the brig,
after a glance over his shoulder, stood up with a low exclamation,

my men feathered" target="_blank" title="a.有羽毛的；羽状的">feathered their oars instinctively, without an order, and
the boat lost her way.

He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip, while
his other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory finger at

the immense tranquillity of the ocean. After his first
exclamation, which stopped the swing of our oars, he made no sound,

but his whole attitude seemed to cry out an indignant "Behold!" . .
. I could not imagine what vision of evil had come to him. I was

startled, and the amazingenergy of his immobilized gesture made my
heart beat faster with the anticipation of something monstrous and

unsuspected. The stillness around us became crushing.
For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on innocently.

I saw each of them swell up the misty line of the horizon, far, far
away beyond the derelict brig, and the next moment, with a slight

friendly toss of our boat, it had passed under us and was gone.
The lulling cadence of the rise and fall, the invariable gentleness

of this irresistible force, the great charm of the deep waters,
warmed my breast deliciously, like the subtle poison of a love-

potion. But all this lasted only a few soothing seconds before I
jumped up too, making the boat roll like the veriest landlubber.

Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking
place. I watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as one

watches the confused, swift movements of some deed of violence done
in the dark. As if at a given signal, the run of the smooth

undulations seemed checked suddenly around the brig. By a strange
optical delusion the whole sea appeared to rise upon her in one

overwhelming heave of its silky surface, where in one spot a
smother of foam broke out ferociously. And then the effort

subsided. It was all over, and the smooth swell ran on as before
from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of motion, passing under

us with a slight friendly toss of our boat. Far away, where the
brig had been, an angry white stain undulating on the surface of

steely-gray waters, shot with gleams of green, diminished swiftly,
without a hiss, like a patch of pure snow melting in the sun. And

the great stillness after this initiation into the sea's implacable
hate seemed full of dread thoughts and shadows of disaster.

"Gone!" ejaculated from the depths of his chest my bowman in a
final tone. He spat in his hands, and took a better grip on his

oar. The captain of the brig lowered his rigid arm slowly, and
looked at our faces in a solemnlyconscious silence, which called

upon us to share in his simple-minded, marvelling awe. All at once
he sat down by my side, and leaned forward earnestly at my boat's

crew, who, swinging together in a long, easy stroke, kept their
eyes fixed upon him faithfully.

"No ship could have done so well," he addressed them firmly, after
a moment of strained silence, during which he seemed with trembling

lips to seek for words fit to bear such high testimony. "She was
small, but she was good. I had no anxiety. She was strong. Last

voyage I had my wife and two children in her. No other ship could
have stood so long the weather she had to live through for days and

days before we got dismasted a fortnight ago. She was fairly worn
out, and that's all. You may believe me. She lasted under us for

days and days, but she could not last for ever. It was long
enough. I am glad it is over. No better ship was ever left to

sink at sea on such a day as this."
He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this

son of ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little
stained by the excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but

the merest foothold from the earth. By the merits of his sea-wise
forefathers and by the artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to

deliver this excellent discourse. There was nothing wanting in its
orderly arrangement - neither piety nor faith, nor the tribute of

praise due to the worthy dead, with the edifying recital of their
achievement. She had lived, he had loved her; she had suffered,

and he was glad she was at rest. It was an excellent discourse.
And it was orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the cardinal article

of a seaman's faith, of which it was a single-minded confession.
"Ships are all right." They are. They who live with the sea have

got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as I
glanced at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy

in honour and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a
ship's constancy in life and death.

After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands
hanging between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement

till the shadow of our ship's sails fell on the boat, when, at the
loud cheer greeting the return of the victors with their prize, he

lifted up his troubled face with a faint smile of pathetic
indulgence. This smile of the worthydescendant of the most

ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had left no trace of
greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the cycle of my

initiation. There was an infinite depth of hereditarywisdom in
its pitying sadness. It made the hearty bursts of cheering sound

like a childish noise of triumph. Our crew shouted with immense
confidence - honest souls! As if anybody could ever make sure of

having prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed so many ships
of great "name," so many proud men, so many towering ambitions of

fame, power, wealth, greatness!
As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-

humour, leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the
rail, and called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his

cynic philosopher's beard:
"So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?"

Sarcasm was "his way," and the most that can be said for it is that
it was natural. This did not make it lovable. But it is decorous

and expedient to fall in with one's commander's way. "Yes. I
brought the boat back all right, sir," I answered. And the good

man believed me. It was not for him to discern upon me the marks
of my recent initiation. And yet I was not exactly the same

youngster who had taken the boat away - all impatience for a race
against death, with the prize of nine men's lives at the end.