The Ship of Stars

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

‘Wife and babe below the river,
Once will I come and then come never.’

“And again in the morning there was a mark on the pillow where her wet hand had rested. But the Prince in the morning could remember nothing. On the third night she came and said:”

‘Wife and babe below the river,
Now I am gone and gone for ever,’

“And went down the stairs with such a reproachful look at John that his heart melted and he ran after her. But at the outer door a flash of lightning met him, and such a storm broke over the palace and city as had never been before and never will be again.

“John heard screams, and the noise of doors banging and feet running throughout the palace; he turned back and met the Prince, his master, coming downstairs with his child in his arms. The lightning stroke had killed his second wife where she lay. John followed him out into the streets, where the people were running to and fro, and through the whirling sand to the ford which crossed the creek a mile above the city. And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose before John, with a child in her arms, and said: ‘Carry us.’ The Prince, who was leading, did not see. John took them on his back, but they were heavy because of the iron chains and weights on their ankles, and the sands sank under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John’s arms and said, ‘Save him,’ and slipped off his back into the water. ‘What sound was that?’ asked the Prince. ‘That was my heart cracking,’ said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John’s arms. ‘Save him,’ he said, and fell forward on his face; and John’s heart cracked again. But he went forward in the darkness until the water rose to his waist, and the sand to his knees. He was close to the farther shore now, but could not reach it unless he dropped one of the children; and this he would not do. He bent forward, holding out one in each arm, and could just manage to push them up the bank and prop them there with his open hand; and while he bent, the tide rose and his heart cracked for the third time. Though he was dead, his stiff arms kept the children propped against the bank. But just at the turning of the tide the one with the ankle-weight slipped and was drowned. The other was found next morning by the inland people, high and dry. And some do say,” Taffy wound up, “that his brother was not really drowned, but turned into a bird, and that, though no one has seen him, it is his voice that gives the ‘crake,’ imitating the sound made by John’s heart when it burst; but others say it comes from John himself, down there below the sands.”

There was silence for a minute. Even Honoria had grown excited toward the end.

“But it was unfair!” she broke out. “It ought to have been the convict-child that was saved.”

“If so, I shouldn’t be here,” said George; “and it’s not very nice of you to say it.”

“I don’t care. It was unfair; and anyone but a boy”—with scorn—“would see it.” She turned upon the staring Taffy—“I hate your tale; it was horrid.”

She repeated it, that evening, as they turned their faces homeward across the heathery moor. Taffy had halted on the top of a hillock to wave good-night to George. For years he remembered the scene—the brown hollow of the hills; the clear evening sky, with the faint purple arch, which is the shadow of the world, climbing higher and higher upon it; and his own shadow stretching back with his heart toward George, who stood fronting the level rays and waved his glittering catch of fish.