listen--and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promising
whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along the
smooth black-painted sides of his craft. What passed in such moments
of thoughtful solitude through the mind of that child of generations of
fishermen from the coast of Devon, who like most of his class was
dead to the subtle voices, and blind to the mysterious aspects of the
world--the man ready for the obvious, no matter how startling, how
terrible or menacing, yet defenceless as a child before the shadowy
impulses of his own heart; what could have been the thoughts of such a
man, when once surrendered to a dreamy mood, it is difficult to say.

No doubt he, like most of us, would be uplifted at times by the awakened
lyrism of his heart into regions charming, empty, and dangerous. But
also, like most of us, he was unaware of his barren journeys above the
interesting cares of this earth. Yet from these, no doubt absurd and
wasted moments, there remained on the man's daily life a tinge as that
of a glowing and serene half-light. It softened the outlines of his
rugged nature; and these moments kept close the bond between him and his
brig.

He was aware that his little vessel could give him something not to be
had from anybody or anything in the world; something specially his own.
The dependence of that solid man of bone and muscle on that obedient
thing of wood and iron, acquired from that feeling the mysterious
dignity of love. She--the craft--had all the qualities of a living
thing: speed, obedience, trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacity
to do and to suffer--all but life. He--the man--was the inspirer of that
thing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was
its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of
its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this