THE BOAT THAT NEVER SAILED
(Note: In the early 70’s the hull of a boat, all overgrown with vines and briers, was found at a place then known as Hungry Cove, on San Jacinto Bay. The story of it was told me by an old boatman who had been a settler of that section of the country for many years.)
Like the moan of a ghost that is doomed to rove,
Is the voice of the wind in Hungry Cove.
And the brier bites with a sharper thorn
Than the fang of hate, or the tooth of scorn.
And the twining vines are as cunningly set
As ever a poacher placed snare or net.
And the waves are hushed, and they move as slow
As fugitives making headway, tiptoe.
For Nature remembers, as well as Man,
The time and the place, and the Mary Ann.
The time, man-measured, was long ago,
Some seventy fleeting years, or so.
The place, where the sea was with light agleam,
And the shore shone white as a maiden’s dream.
And the Mary Ann—how a prayer prevailed!—
Was the name of the boat that never sailed.
For the men who built it, a blackguard twain,
Had taken a maiden’s pure name in vain.
And she prayed that for taunts, and for many mocks,
The boat would not move from its building blocks.
But the builders laughed at the maiden’s prayer,
And spit on her name they had painted there.
And they swore, in defiance of God and man,
They would launch the boat they had named Mary Ann.
But when they stood ready at stern and stem,
The boat fell down on the heads of them.
And no one came to where crushed they lay,
And no one will come until judgment day.
For their guards are briers with thorns that bite
With a pain as keen as the sting of spite.
And their only dirge is the song of the loon,
When the sea is black, in the dark of the moon.
[[145]]
THE PADRE’S BEACON[1]
(Note: Boatmen, at night, staring into the fog and haze in search of certain marks and objects, often think to see them, only to have them disappear again when they blink their eyes. These visual illusions are called Padre’s Beacons. An old boatman, many years ago, told how the name originated, and his story is here set down in rhyme.)
With eager eyes an Indian peered
Into the darkness of the night,
And his canoe he swiftly sheered
From right to left, from left to right;
For lost within the blinding fog,
He saw the mad waves roll and toss,
And found both snag and sunken log
But not the Padre’s beacon cross.
He dipped his paddle in the sea,
And found its depth now less, now more;
And where he thought the Pass would be
He only found a weedstrewn shore.
He questioned of the hidden star,
And counseled with the waning moon,
But found no answer, near or far,
Only the lone cry of the loon.
And he had steered by wave and wind
To where the beacon cross should be,
That marked the place where all might find
The way into the Trinity.
For there, ’mong cypress trees grown gray,
The padre’s little hut showed white,
Beneath a shining cross by day,
And in a taper’s gleam by night.
But vandal hands had cut adrift
The padre’s beacon in the night,
And without prayer, and without shrift,
A sea wrecked soul at dawn took flight.
And now who sails the bay at night,
And scans the dark with eager eyes,
Out of the sea, grown gray with light,
Can see a beacon cross arise.
For since that night long, long ago,
When clouds hang wide and fogs lie deep,
For him that laid that beacon low
There is no rest in death, or sleep;
All night he lifts it from the sea,
All night he strives, and strives in vain;
He stands it up, but when set free
It sinks into the sea again.
[[146]]