horn sounded. The boat had entered the narrows.
'Twas coming slowly through the quiet evening--laden with bait for the
fishing of to-morrow. Again the horn--echoing sweetly, faintly, among
the hills of Twin Islands. 'Twas Moses Shoos that blew; there was no
mistaking the long-drawn blast.

* * * * *

Ah, well! she needed the grooming, this _Shining Light_, whatever the
occasion. 'Twas scandalous to observe her decay in idleness. She
needed the grooming--this neglected, listless, slatternly old maid of
a craft. A craft of parts, to be sure, as I had been told; but a craft
left to slow wreck, at anchor in quiet water. Year by year, since I
could remember the days of my life, in summer and winter weather she
had swung with the tides or rested silent in the arms of the ice. I
had come to Twist Tickle aboard, as the tale of my infancy ran, on the
wings of a nor'east gale of some pretensions; and she had with heroic
courage weathered a dirty blow to land me upon the eternal rocks of
Twin Islands. For this--though but an ancient story, told by old folk
to engage my presence in the punts and stages of our harbor--I loved
her, as a man, Newfoundland born and bred, may with propriety love a
ship.

There are maids to be loved, no doubt, and 'tis very nice to love
them, because they are maids, fashioned in a form most lovely by the
good Lord, given a heart most childlike and true and loving and
tenderly dependent, so that, in all the world, as I know, there is
nothing so to be cherished with a man's last breath as a maid. I have
loved a maid and speak with authority. But there is also a love of
ships, though, being inland-born, you may not know it. 'Tis a
surpassing faith and affection, inspired neither by beauty nor virtue,
but wilful and mysterious, like the love of a maid. 'Tis much the
same, I'm thinking: forgiving to the uttermost, prejudiced beyond the
perception of any fault, savagely loyal. 'Twas in this way, at any
rate, that my uncle regarded the _Shining Light_; and 'twas in this
way, too, with some gentler shades of admiration, proceeding from an
apt imagination, that I held the old craft in esteem.

"Dannie," says my uncle, presently, as we walked homeward, "ye'll
'blige me, lad, by keepin' a eye on the mail-boat."

I wondered why.

"You keep a eye," he whispered, winking in a way most grave and
troubled, "on that there little mail-boat when she lands her
passengers."