The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail."
She declaimed the melodious verse with a subtle skill that amazed her hearer. Profoundly moved, Jenks dared not trust himself to speak.
"I read the whole poem the other day," she said after a silence of some minutes. "Sorrowful as it is, it comforted me by comparison. How different will be our fate to his when 'another ship stays by this isle'!"
Yet neither of them knew that one line she had recited was more singularly applicable to their case than that which they paid heed to. "The great stars that globed themselves in Heaven," were shining clear and bright in the vast arch above. Resplendent amidst the throng rose the Pleiades, the mythological seven hailed by the Greeks as an augury of safe navigation. And the Dyaks—one of the few remaining savage races of the world—share the superstition of the people who fashioned all the arts and most of the sciences.
The Pleiades form the Dyak tutelary genius. Some among a bloodthirsty and vengeful horde were even then pointing to the clustering stars that promised quick voyage to the isle where their kinsmen had been struck down by a white man who rescued a maid. Nevertheless, Grecian romance and Dyak lore alike relegate the influence of the Pleiades to the sea. Other stars are needed to foster enterprise ashore.