through dashing music, and motion, and spray, and whipped one’s blood to a wild, unreasoning exultation. Aye, one had three kingdoms in those days—the air, the sky, the sea; and a fourth, within; and all full to the brim with vigour.
And then there was the ship herself, real and companionable entity that she was: airy and beautiful creation somewhere between Nature and Man, and in touch with both; a marvel always, and always a friend. Seen from the shore, her white beauty drew the eye like a magnet, and gleamed like some jewel which the blue sea existed apparently only to set and so enhance; but the real heart of her beauty, as of all living things, lay in her living-ness—and that, you must be aboard to feel. I used to love to get up in the bow, to watch her sharp white stem cleaving the wide water into twin curls of crystal, and taste the purity of the immense air as she divided it by her advance; then, turning, see her whole white, lovely self, coming as it seemed, towards me. Or, from the stern, to see her go about on a breezy day—deck all aslant, wind dinting the sails into deep hollows, sun filling them with gold, and pencilling them with the dun shadows of shrouds and dangling reef-points, water all a brave and white-capped boisterous blue on this side of her, roughly dark and silver on the other. . . . And now it is “Lee O!” from the captain, as he takes the helm, and the steersman runs forward to help in letting go the headsheets. Over goes the helm, out fades the wind from the great mainsail overhead, and like a disappointed, helpless thing, all the life out of it, there it hangs, listless, flat, unlit . . . till, as she recovers the breeze, first the headsails, then the
