She sat on the tarred old jetty, with a sailor's careless ease,
And the clear waves danced around her feet and kissed her tawny knees;
Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throat
Chiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.
II
Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping, slapping seas,
And the rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze;
And she sat and waited her father's craft, while Dan Trevennick's eyes
Were sheepishly watching her sunlit smiles and her soft contented sighs.
III
For he thought he would give up his good black pipe and his evening glasses of beer,
And blunder to chapel on Sundays again for a holy Christian year,
To hold that foot in his hard rough hand and kiss the least of its toes:
Then he swore at himself for a great damned fool; which he probably was, God knows.
IV
Often in summer twilights, too, he would sit on a coil of rope,
As the stars came out in their twinkling crowds to play with wonder and hope,
While he watched the side of her clear-cut face as she sat on the jetty and fished,
And even to help her coil her line was more than he hoped or wished.
V
But once or twice o'er the dark green tide he saw with a solemn delight,
Hooked and splashing after her line, a flash and a streak of white;
As hand over hand she hauled it up, a great black conger eel,
For Dan Trevennick to kill as it squirmed with its head beneath his heel.
VI