r light.

One day, I remember, a boy had to take a sheaf of documents to a vessel
loading in the London Dock. She was sailing that tide. It was a hot
July noon. It is unlucky to send a boy, who is marked by all the omens
for a City prisoner, to that dock, for it is one of the best of its
kind. He had not been there before. There was an astonishing vista,
once inside the gates, of sherry butts and port casks. On the
flagstones were pools of wine lees. There was an unforgettable smell.
It was of wine, spices, oakum, wool, and hides. The sun made it worse,
but the boy, I think, preferred it strong. After wandering along many
old quays, and through the openings of dark sheds that, on so sunny a
day, were stored with cool night and cubes and planks of gold, he found
his ship, the _Mulatto Girl_. She was for the Brazils. Now it is
clear that one even wiser in shipping affairs than a boy would have
expected to see a craft that was haughty and portentous when bound for
the Brazils, a ship that looked equal to making a coast of that kind.
There she was, her flush deck well below the quay wall. A ladder went
down to her, for she was no more than a schooner of a little over one
hundred tons. If that did not look like the beginning of one of those
voyages reputed to have ended with the Elizabethans, then I am trying
to convey a wrong impression. On the deck of the _Mulatto Girl_ was
her master, in shirt and trousers and a remarkable straw hat more like
a canopy, bending over to discharge some weighty words into the hatch.
He rose and looked up at the boy on the quay, showing then a taut black
beard and formidable eyes. With his hands on his hips, he surveyed for
a few seconds, without speaking, the messenger above. Then he talked
business, and more than legitimate business. "Do you want to come?" he
asked, and smiled. "Eh?" He stroked his beard. (The Brazils and all!
A ship like that!) "There's a berth for you. Come along, my son."
And observe what we may lose through that habit of ours of uncritical
obedience to duty; see what may leave us for ever in that fatal pause,
caused by the surprise of the challenge to our narrow experience and
knowledge, the pause in which we allow habit to overcome adventurous
instinct! I never heard again of the _Mulatto Girl_. I could not
expect to. Something, though, was gained that day. It cannot be
named. It is of no value. It is, you may have guessed, that very
light wh