ean we were
caught in a tornado, and we thought--Captain Blaise said afterward he
thought so too--that we had stood our last watch. And at the height of
it--we could do nothing but stand by--one of the crew, a young fellow--I
was only sixteen years old myself then--said to me, 'Oh, Master Guy,
what will she say when she hears?' He meant his young wife. He'd been
married just before we put out, and she'd come down to the ship to see
him off. So listen:

"'The spray, most-like, was in my eyes,
He waved his hand to me--
The wind it blew a gale that day
When he sailed out to sea.'"

"Ah-h!" She leaned closer.

"It _was_ a gale the day we put out. We had to get out--in Charleston
Harbor it was--and they were hot after us--gale or no gale, Captain
Blaise put out. I'm trying to imagine what she would think when she
heard.

"'And now no spray is in my eyes,
No hand is waved to me--
But all the gales of time shall blow
Ere he comes back from sea!'"

"And she a bride! Oh-h, the poor girl!" She had leaned over my shoulder
to read it for herself, and her breath was on my cheek.

"That is why, if I had--a wife, I should dread the sea."

"And that is why a woman--But how long have you been writing poetry?"

"Poetry? Or rhyme? Never before the day I saw you."

"But when did such ideas before take hold of you?"

"The other night I was lying here looking up, and after a time the moon
shone through onto my cot, and you crossed its path--you had given me my
night cup and I had pretended to be asleep; and I thought of you looking
out on the moonlit sea and I got to wondering what you were thinking of.
And I remembered a thousand such moonlit nights when you were not there.
And I thought what a difference it would have made had you been there,
and so when I say

"'The Western Ocean smiled that night--Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'

"you must not smile. I meant it; for if the ocean smiles and whispers and
makes men dream of--"

"Oh-h!" her head had settled and now her cheek was against mine. "Go
on," she said softly.

"It made me dream of her that was never more than a dream-woman until I
saw you. No longer a dream--not after you stepped out onto the veranda
of the Governor's house that night in Momba. I knew it again when,
looking out from the shrubbery in the garden, you looked at me and said,
'And who is this?' And I knew it when with you in the long-boat, when I
wanted to reach out a