He had been a member of the crew of the smuggling schooner Halcyon when
she was captured by a revenue cutter. He saw with wide eyes, and he
could tell what he saw. He brought the pulsing sea before them, and the
men and the ships upon the sea. He communicated his power of vision,
till they saw with his eyes what he had seen. He selected from the vast
mass of detail with an artist's touch, drawing pictures of life that
glowed and burned with light and color, injecting movement so that his
listeners surged along with him on the flood of rough eloquence,
enthusiasm, and power. At times he shocked them with the vividness of
the narrative and his terms of speech, but beauty always followed fast
upon the heels of violence, and tragedy was relieved by humor, by
interpretations of the strange twists and quirks of sailors' minds.

And while he talked, the girl looked at him with startled eyes. His fire
warmed her. She wondered if she had been cold all her days. She wanted
to lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano spouting
forth strength, robustness, and health. She felt that she must lean
toward him, and resisted by an effort. Then, too, there was the counter
impulse to shrink away from him. She was repelled by those lacerated
hands, grimed by toil so that the very dirt of life was ingrained in the
flesh itself, by that red chafe of the collar and those bulging muscles.
His roughness frightened her; each roughness of speech was an insult to
her ear, each rough phase of his life an insult to her soul. And ever
and again would come the draw of him, till she thought he must be evil to
have such power over her. All that was most firmly established in her
mind was rocking. His romance and adventure were battering at the
conventions. Before his facile perils and ready laugh, life was no
longer an affair of serious effort and restraint, but a toy, to be played
with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly to be lived and pleasured in, and
carelessly to be flung aside. "Therefore, play!" was the cry that rang