“Strange to say, it is always at night that I think most of the ocean. And on nights of storm—then it is that I lie awake listening to the wind roaring through the stately elms, with a sound like the sough of gale-tossed waves. It is then I long to tread once more the deck of my own bonnie barque, and feel her move beneath me like a veritable thing of life and reason. My house with the ivied tower is well away among the midlands; and yet on nights of tempest, sea-birds—the gull, and the tern, and the light-winged kittywake—often fly around the house and the trees. I can hear their voices rising shrill and high above the roar of the wind.
“‘Kaye—kay—ay—ay,’ they scream. ‘Come away—come away—ay,’ they seem to cry. ‘Why have you left us? why have you left the seas? We miss you. Come away—come away—ay—ay.’
“Never into my quarterdeck dreams, gentlemen, had there come, strange to say, a companion fair of womankind. My house with the tower to it should be just as it is to-day, just what—following out my dreams—I have made it. Its gardens all should bloom surpassing fair, my woods and trees be green; the rose lawns should look like velvet; my ribboned flower-beds like curves of coloured light; the nightingales in spring should bathe in the spray of my fountains,—there should be joy and loveliness and bird-song everywhere, but a wife?—well, I had somehow never dreamt of that. If any of the officers—for I was captain and part owner of the good barque Sea Flower—had been bold enough to suggest such a thing—I mean such a person, I should have laughed at him where he stood. ‘Who,’ I should have said, ‘would many a simple sailor like me, over thirty, brown-red in face, and hard in hands. Who indeed?’
“But into my quarterdeck dreams companions had come. Should I not have jolly farmers and solid-looking red-faced squires to dine with me, and to smoke with me out of doors in the cool of midsummer evenings, or in the cosy red parlour around the fire in the long forenights of winter, and listen to my yarns of the dark blue sea, or talk to me of the delights of rural life? Well, it was a pretty dream, it must be admitted.
“But it never struck me then, as it does now, that all the joys of life are tame indeed, unless shared by some one you love more than all things bright and fair.
“A pretty dream—and a beautiful dream. A piece of ice itself is beautiful at times; but perhaps, as we stand and admire it, the sunshine may steal down and melt it. Then we find that we love the sunshine even more than we loved the ice.
“It is not every sailor who has the luck to be captain, or, to speak more correctly, master, of so fine a sailing craft as the Sea Flower, at the age of twenty-six. But such had been my fortune; and I had sailed the seas in her for six long years, and, with the exception of the few accidents inseparable from a life at sea, I had never had a serious mishap. Many a wild gale had we weathered in her, my mate and I; many a dark and tempestuous night had we staggered along under bare poles; more than once had we sprung a leak, and twice had we been on fire.
“But all ended well, and during our brief spells on shore, either in England or in some foreign port, though James and I always managed to enjoy ourselves in our own quiet way, yet neither he nor I was sorry when we got back home again to our bonnie barque, and were once more afloat on the heaving sea.
“James was perhaps more of a sailor than I. Well, he was some years my senior, and he was browner and harder by far, and every inch a man. And though a very shy one, as far as female society is concerned, he was a very bold one nevertheless. But for his courageous example on the night of our last fire, the Sea Flower would have helped to swell the list of those ships that go to sea and are heard of no more.