This was, in the first place, nothing more important than an old ship’s bell with a crescent-shaped fragment broken out. It had evidently been thrown down there when it was replaced by a new one. It was thick with dirt and verdigris; but, pressed for time as he was, an instinct of curiosity made him linger while he scraped off some of the deposit with his knife to see if anything lay beneath.
His first find was a date—1869.
“Hallo! This gets interesting!” he exclaimed. “Here’s a letter—‘D’—no, ‘P,’ ‘L’ something, an ‘M,’ another ‘M’——”
His breath began to come fast with excitement. He scraped away harder than ever.
“It can’t be,” he gasped, sitting back on his heels, “but, by George, it is!... The ‘Plinlimmon’!”
Possibly few people outside that comparatively restricted circle which is closely interested in sailing ships and their records could understand the feeling of almost reverential awe with which the mate of the “Gairloch” gazed at the dim lettering on that old broken bell. To most laymen—indeed, to many seamen of the more modern school—it would have stood for nothing but an old outworn ship—a good ship, no doubt, in her day, a day long since over and done.
But to Kavanagh and to his like the name “Plinlimmon” had a very different significance.
Some ships there are whose names remain as names to conjure with long after they themselves are gone—names about which yarns will be spun and songs sung while still any live who have felt their spell. Such a ship was the “James Baines” of mighty memory; such also were the glorious “Thermopylæ,” the lovely “Mermerus”; such the evergreen “Cutty Sark” and her forerunner “The Tweed.” And—though perhaps in a lesser degree—such was also the “Plinlimmon.”
And to Kavanagh she was even more.
She was like something belonging peculiarly to his own youth. She was inextricably interwoven with the memories of his boyhood, of his first voyage—those memories which for him now held the wistful golden glamour of youth departed.