the ring-bolt had been torn clean out,
but at the other it was the cordage that had parted. To the frayed
ends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride in my own
cunning. Do you not see? It would keep them fresh for my use, and it was
a trick I had read of in no book; it was all my own.

So evening fell and found me hopeful and even puffed up; but yet, no
sail.

Now, however, I could lie back, and use had given me a strange sense of
safety; besides, I think I knew, I hope I felt, that the hen-coop was in
other Hands than mine.

All is reaction in the heart of man; light follows darkness nowhere more
surely than in that hidden self, and now at sunset it was my heart's
high-noon. Deep peace pervaded me as I lay outstretched in my narrow
rocking bed, as it might be in my coffin; a trust in my Maker's will
to save me if that were for the best, a trust in His final wisdom and
loving-kindness, even though this night should be my last on earth. For
myself I was resigned, and for others I must trust Him no less. Who was
I to constitute myself the protector of the helpless, when He was in
His Heaven? Such was my sunset mood; it lasted a few minutes, and then,
without radically changing, it became more objective.

The west was a broadening blaze of yellow and purple and red. I cannot
describe it to you. If you have seen the sun set in the tropics, you
would despise my description; and, if not, I for one could never make
you see it. Suffice it that a petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening
carmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthy
tangent. I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes;
no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatross
that I had caught going out. Its beak and talons were at the bottom
with the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see them
still, could feel them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old
superstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which
I, with my special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatest
poem ever penned.

But I did not know it then as I do now--and how the lines eluded me! I
seemed to see them in the book, yet I could not read the words!

"Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."

That, of course, came first (incorrectly); and it reminded me of my
thirst, which the blood of the fowls had so very partially appeased. I
see