"With ivory comb,
Daylong thou dalliest dreaming where
The rainbow foam
Enisles thy murmuring home:
Home too for me, though I behold it ne'er!

"Yet when the bird
Is tired, and each little wave,
Aloft is heard
A call, reminds thee gird
Thy robe and climb to where the summits rave:

"Yea, to the white
Lone sea-mark shaken on the verge--
'What of the night?'
Ah, climb--ah, lift the light!
Ah, lamp thy lover labouring in the surge!

"Fray'd rope, burst sail,
Drench'd wing, as moth toward the spark--
I fetch, I fail,
Glad only that the gale
Breaks not my faith upon the brutal dark.

"Be it frost or fire,
Thy bosom, I believed it warm:
I did aspire
For that, and my desire--
Burn thou or freeze--fought thro' and beat the storm.

"Thou, thou, that art
My sole salvation, fixed, afar,
I have no chart,
No compass but a heart
Hungry for thee and for no other star."

"Humph!" said I, by way of criticism, when these verses were shown to
me. "Where be the mackerel lines, Captain Jo? There's too much
love-talk aboard this ship of yours."

"Mackerel?" said Captain Jo. "Why, where's your bait?"

"You shall lend me an inch off your pipe-stem," said I, and, to tease
Nat, began to hum the senseless old song:

"She has ta'en a siller wand
An' gi'en strokes three,
An' chang'd my sister Masery
To a mack'rel of the sea.
And every Saturday at noon
The mack'rel comes to me,
An' she takes my laily head
An' lays it on her knee,
An' kames it wi' a kame o' pearl,
An' washes it i' the sea--"

"Mackerel?" said Captain Pomery. "If ye found one fool enough to
take hold at the rate we're sailing, ye'd pull his head off."

"Why, then, he would be off his head," answered I: "and there are
plenty here to make him feel at home."

In truth I was nettled; jealous, as a lad in his first friendship is
quick to be. Were not Nat and I of one age? Then why should he be
leaving thoughts we might share, to think of woman? I had chafed at
Oxford against his precocious entanglements. Here on shipboard his
propensity was past a joke; with no goose in sight to mistake for a
swan, he must needs conjure up an imaginary princess for his
devotion