CHAPTER I
ON THE BLUE SEA
A blue sea—a blue sky. The yacht was sailing under deep azure, reflected back by calm waters. It was unlike the jolts and staccato teuf-teuf of the automobile; it was gentle as the swinging of a balloon in the open heavens. The furrow of foam behind the yacht was like a trail of clouds.
On the promenade-deck, in the shade of the big deck-house, grandma, Ethel, and Will were taking the air, stretched out in bamboo chairs. Through the open door books and newspapers could be seen on the table, and in the corners of the salon baskets of beautiful flowers were disposed. The sea breeze mingled with the smell of roses. Near the yacht’s prow a band was playing softly. Among the crew there were musicians by trade,—old sailors of the navy bands. They were training themselves for gala-days later on—in Sicily, in Greece, in Morgania. Their low notes reached the group at the stern like a murmur of distant voices. Ethel looked abstractedly across the sea to the horizon. She was thinking of the country she had left behind—of the mists and gardens where the leaves fall in autumn; of the countries she was yet to see, with their blue archipelagos, whose white minarets seem milky pearls set in sapphire.
She was almost overwhelmed with remembrances. She thought of those shores where poets sang of gods and heroes; of that sea which had reflected, in turn, fable and faith, where the galley of St. Paul crossed the meandering track of Ulysses’s bark. She found exquisite delight in this legendary past. She fancied to herself Cleopatra and Dido and Morgana, queens who were all but goddesses, and the Roman matrons, borne across the waves to the sound of lutes, with their jesters and their scribes. At her side, Will and grandma were chatting quietly.
“You are a good boy,” grandma said. “I am glad you got my telegram in time to put an elevator in the yacht;—perhaps the reason I like new things is because I am growing old.”
“Not at all, grandma,” interrupted Ethel. “What is stupider than to go climbing up-stairs? It is the least esthetic of all movements.”
“That was my idea!” said grandma.
“And the wireless telegraph was mine,” said Will.
Will had himself supervised the building of his yacht, to make it a model of its type. He deserved a Nobel prize for the practical way in which he had foreseen everything. But its nautical qualities, and the rigidity of its double steel shell were as nothing in comparison with its interior comfort.