Sard Harker: A novel

by John Masefield

During the day, while bending sails aloft, he had seen the white walls of Los Xicales and had been struck by their likeness to a house in England, near the sea, where he had stayed as a child. He had taken a good look at the place, while waiting for the sail to come up to him, with the thought that it was either a coastguard station or a lighthouse. After that, work occupied him until dusk, so that he put the house out of his mind.

For some weeks he had been training himself to be “a hard case,” that is, able to stand exposure, by sleeping on the top of the deckhouse, between the mizen staysail and one of the boats. Here, with one blanket between himself and the deck, one blanket over him, and a coil of boat’s falls for a pillow, he went to bed that night as usual, thinking the thoughts which meant much to him. These thoughts were not about the house, but about a girl, whose idea filled his inner life intensely.

He had thought his thoughts of this girl, as he always did, when putting the day from him, and had then turned over, to sleep as usual. He saw the stars overhead, through a maze of the main-rigging: he heard the water go crooning and gurgling by, and a man in the deckhouse beneath him knock out his pipe; then instantly he was asleep, in a sea-sleep, a depth of sleep, a million miles from this world.

Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with that mansion by the sea lit up in his brain and words ringing like prophecy in his ears:

“You will meet her again in that house, for the second of the three times. It will be very, very important, so be ready.”

He had risen up in the cold and dew of before dawn to stare towards the house, almost expecting to see it lit with angels; but it lay among its trees, barely visible. The dew was dripping, the water crooning and the watchman humming a song between his teeth. The cook was up making coffee, for there was a light in the galley; everything was as usual, except himself.

He was so shaken with excitement that he gripped the mizen stay to keep himself from leaping overboard to swim to that lone beach. Then caution had come back upon him, with the thought, “It will not be to-day; we are sailing to-day; ‘it will be,’ the message said, not ‘it is’; I am to stand by; it is all for the future, not for now.”

At that moment the order came to call all hands; and by daylight the Venturer was standing out from the northern channel, while Sard cast loose the gaskets and shouted “All gone the main-royal” to those on deck. For more than nine years he saw no more of Las Palomas, but the memory of his dream remained intense. The “first” of the “three times” was the deepest thing in his life: it made him shake, even to think of it: the hope of the second time kept him alive.

Then in February, 1897, he came again to Las Palomas, this time as mate in the Pathfinder. Again he looked out on Los Xicales, this time through a strong telescope from the main top-gallant cross-trees. He saw the house unchanged in all those years, save that it looked more battered. When he could he went ashore, and walked northward along the beach, over the tongue of red earth with the pine trees, to the house itself.

He found no barrier to his entrance to the grounds on that side, save the close-growing thorny mita shrubs which covered the low bank above the beach. Beyond the bank, they had spread beach-shingle as a drive; the house rose up out of the shingle white and withered against the blackness of pines and the gloom of Spanish moss. It was a pleasant, Southern mansion, less than twenty years old, the worse for wear. It had a look of having come down in the world, or rather, that staring look of having come past its best, which houses share with men and flowers: