The Ship of Coral

Transcriber’s Note
The cover of this eBook contains an illustration from the original book. The text was added by the Transcriber and placed into the Public Domain.
The Crimson Azaleas The Blue Lagoon Garryowen The Pools of Silence The Drums of War Patsy Poems and Ballads
“Gaspard drew her towards him.”
THE SHIP OF CORAL
BY H. de VERE STACPOOLE
NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1911
Copyright, 1911 By DUFFIELD & COMPANY


The sea lay blue to the far horizon. Blue—Ah, blue is but a name till you have seen the sea that breaks around the Bahamas and gives anchorage to the tall ships at Port Royal; that great sheet of blue water stretching from Cape Catoche to the Windward Islands, and from Yucatan to beyond the Bahamas, studded with banks and keys and reefs, the old sea of the Buccaneers shot over with the doings of Kidd and Singleton and Horne.
On the salt white sand in the blinding dazzle of sunlight the waves were falling, clear-green, crystalline, each lovely as a jewel. The crying of the gulls, loud all the morning, had died down with high afternoon and high tide; the wind had faded as though withered by the sun. Just at the moment of high tide the sea makes a pause in its eternal labour, the great act of systole has been accomplished and, break the waves as they may, the profound languor of the ocean makes itself heard and felt.