ly these words--

'THOU HAST HER NOT FOR NOTHING.'

His eyes travelled proudly over the nearly completed vessel. Every one
of her swelling curves he knew by heart; had learned to know and love
through long months of toil. How still she lay, the beauty, still as a
bird, poising on the sea. Ah! but the day was coming when she would
spread her wings and skim over the ocean, buoyant and dainty as one of
the terns, those sea-swallows that with their sharp white wings even
now were hovering round her. Built for use she was too, not merely to
take the eye. Although small of size more bales of goods could be
stowed away under her shapely decks than in many another larger
clumsier vessel. Who should know this better than Robert, her maker,
who had planned it all?

For what had he planned her?

Was it for the voyage to the Eastern Mediterranean that had been the
desire of his heart for many years? How well he knew it, that voyage
he had never made! Down the Channel he would go, past Ushant and
safely across the Bay. Then, when Finisterre had dropped to leeward,
it would be but a few days' sail along the pleasant coasts of Portugal
till Gibraltar was reached. And then, heigh ho! for a fair voyage in
the summer season, week after week over a calm blue sea to the
land-locked harbour where flat-roofed, white-walled houses, stately
palm-trees, rosy domes and minarets, mirrored in the still water,
gazed down at their own reflections.

Was the _Woodhouse_ for this?

He had planned her for this dream voyage.

Why then came that other Voice in his heart directly he began to
build: 'FASHION THEE A SHIP FOR THE SERVICE OF TRUTH!' And now that
she was nearly completed, why did the Voice grow daily more insistent,
giving ever clearer directions?

What a bird she was! His own bird of the sea, his beautiful
_Woodhouse_! So thought Master Robert Fowler. But then again came the
insistent Voice within, speaking yet more clearly and distinctly than
ever before: 'THOU HAST HER NOT FOR NOTHING.'

The vision of his sea-swallow, her white wings gleaming in the sun as
she dropped anchor in that still harbour; the vision of the white and
rose-coloured city stretched like an encircling arm around the
turquoise waters, these dreams faded relentlessly from his sight.
Instead he saw the _Woodhouse_ beating up wearily against a bleak and
rugged shore on which grey waves were breaking. Angry, white teeth
those giant breakers showed; teeth that woul