,
the crowd of attentive faces, the blaze of vivid colour--the water
reflecting it all, the curve of the shore, the jetty, the high-sterned
outlandish craft floating still, and the three boats with tired men
from the West sleeping unconscious of the land and the people and of the
violence of sunshine. They slept thrown across the thwarts, curled on
bottom-boards, in the careless attitudes of death. The head of the old
skipper, leaning back in the stern of the long-boat, had fallen on his
breast, and he looked as though he would never wake. Farther out old
Mahon's face was upturned to the sky, with the long white beard spread
out on his breast, as though he had been shot where he sat at the
tiller; and a man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with
both arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on the
gunwale. The East looked at them without a sound.

"I have known its fascination since: I have seen the mysterious shores,
the still water, the lands of brown nations, where a stealthy Nemesis
lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so many of the conquering race, who are
proud of their wisdom, of their knowledge, of their strength. But for me
all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all in that
moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle
with the sea--and I was young--and I saw it looking at me. And this is
all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of
romance, of glamour--of youth!... A flick of sunshine upon a strange
shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh,
and--good-bye!--Night--Good-bye...!"

He drank.

"Ah! The good old time--the good old time. Youth and the sea. Glamour
and the sea! The good, strong sea, the salt, bitter sea, that could
whisper to you and roar at you and knock your breath out of you."

He drank again.

"By all that's wonderful, it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself--or
is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here--you all had something out
of life: money, love--whatever one gets on shore--and, tell me, wasn't
that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and
had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks--and
sometimes a chance to feel your strength--that only--what you all
regret?"

And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the
man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a
still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, l