And the hair that hung over her shoulders was
Tied up with a black velvet band.
When Mead later on gave me a copy of this song, which I shall not forget, duly set out in “cantos,” he was good enough to ornament it with a little picture of the black bow as tailpiece.
The heat became very strong, and as the day declined, a great cloud-bank rose up out to sea, and the air settled to that stillness in which the fall of the ripples from the side sounds most insistent. Dark came on, and from two arches or caverns of smouldering twilight under the extremities of that mighty cloud the lightnings burst; lightnings in whose general wide waft of brightness intense white wreaths suddenly lived and withered, branches of fire stretched forth and were gone; while in the opposite heaven “like a dying lady,” went the horned moon.
Meanwhile the Bonadventure not slacking her unusual speed came to a lightship; then (for this was a pilot station) the engines thrashed up the water as she manœuvred for the pilot’s most comfortable approach. The boatmen came rowing him lustily out to us; our rope ladder was lowered–at these moments I was sensible of a sort of proud anxiety on the part of all aboard, that such a detail should be carried out with all despatch–and up he came. And after him, a rope was asked for, and sent down; up came a great stringful of fish, gleaming like the sea under the moon; and once more the rope went down, and a collection of jars which were at once thought to contain wine was hauled on board. Then, from the boat “Finish!” but she did not depart, making fast to the Bonadventure. She circling about the lightship, at length brought her companion within a stone’s throw. Then the boat was cut adrift, and we went on our way towards a line of buoys whose flashes lit up the expanse ahead.
We came now close by the misty lights of a town named Puerto Militar and further on those of Ingeniero White, the little port of Bahia Blanca to which the Bonadventure was actually bound, began to beckon. About eleven the anchors were let go, and the pilot retired to sleep; but I still stayed with Mead, regarding dully the dull lights of our surroundings, and consuming cocoa, and blessing the exhalation of the continent which had first met me at sea some weeks ago. Already fishing, the steward leaned over the rail close by; he had often painted the angling at Bahia Blanca in enthusiastic colours. However, he seemed to catch nothing.
By this the moon, that had grown almost a giantess as she stooped down the horizon, and had reddened like a glowing coal to the last almost, was dwindling. The orb became a beacon dying on a hill; then dropped below the sky. The lightnings over the quiet sea had almost ceased.
XIX
I slept heavily, and when I got up, the Bonadventure had moved into the channel towards Ingeniero White, and was lying at anchor outside that place. The scenery about us was of pleasing ugliness, worthy of George Crabbe’s poetical painting. To seaward there lay long stretches of mud, or banks of a sort of grass–long layers of brown and green ending at the frontier of a blue-grey rainy sky; and the land was low, featureless (save for a mountain height in the hazy interior) and dark. Close to our mooring was the assemblage of motley huts and tenements, galvanized iron roofs, tall chimneys, and more notably the grain elevators, under which several other steamers were lying. Above the salt marshes a rainbow touched the clouds, and too soon the sun was pouring upon everything a dazzling sultry heat.