brush. I find no words
for its description, but fantastic it was and strange. Under the fetich
of the starlight I would find myself drifting away into realms of
storied romance with the woman I loved and had not seen. Then my bow
would all unconsciously drift into love songs. I would find myself
singing--"Ever the wide world over, lass"--and oftentimes when my voice
rose to the strain I could fancy that She joined me in its singing. Her
voice sang in my brain definitely and with the sweetness of the beloved
and familiar. I had, of course, never heard a syllable from her lips,
and yet I was sure that could I hear her voice in life I should
instantly recognize it, though blindfolded. I thought of it as a richly
sweet contralto. It never for a moment occurred to me to fancy it might
be anything else.

Once for a week the sky ceased to smile, and grew black. The jungle was
lashed and stripped with hurricanes and on several occasions the earth
trembled. The sea pounded our porous coast and boiled into a tremendous
tide. I knew that if the cyclonic scope was general, ships were having
trouble, but in that thought lurked a vague hope. If any power were to
drive a vessel to my rescue it would be a power which carried sailors
out of their ordered courses. One night, some six months after the wreck
of the _Wastrel_, when the skies were serene again I found myself more
than ordinarily adrift on the tide of imagination. The march of the
stars showed that midnight had passed, and yet the natives sat
unhurried, and I, as unhurried as they, was still absorbed with the
violin.

My eyes traveled out to sea, absently and without reason. Suddenly the
bow stopped half-way across the strings with a rasping gasp of the
catgut. The instrument itself fell from my hands and I sat rigid and
staring like a man suddenly stricken. The other eyes followed mine and
also remained riveted. Leagues away over the phosphorescent waste of
water, but clear and unblinking, glowed the green spot of a ship's
starboard light. I tried to speak, but for the moment my grasp on their
dialect slipped from me and left me dumb. I was trembling with
heart-bursting excitement, and at sight of my emotion they began to stir
uneasily with a threat of panic.

As suddenly as it had left me my self-possession returned. With a
sweeping gesture I pointed to the myriad stars that gemmed the heavens
and told them that one of these had come down to the sea, bringing other
demi