“‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new’—(new what? Well, skip it!—)
‘Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.’
“That’s a fine idea,” he thought, “if I could make this rubber raft grow. But I can’t, so I’d better catch me a fish.”
The sharks were gone. His fishing on that day met with marvelous success. After a terrific struggle in which his boat was all but capsized a dozen times, he succeeded in landing a twenty-pound king salmon.
“Boy, oh, boy!” he exclaimed. “How did you get way out here?”
That was not an important question. After cutting off the salmon’s head, he sliced the rich, red steaks into strips and set them drying along the sides of his boat.
“‘Take, eat, and be content,’” he quoted. “‘These fishes in your stead were sent by him who sent the tangled ram, to spare the child of Abraham.’”
He didn’t know what that was all about, but it did somehow seem to fit his case, so he liked it.
One evening his sea was visited by one more flight of small birds with big, ugly heads. By one device and another he captured six of these. Five went into his larder but the sixth being young-appearing and innocent got a new lease on life. He tied it to the boat by a string. At first his pet objected strenuously, but in the end he settled down to a diet of dried salmon meat and was content to sit by the hour perched on the side of Danny’s boat. He looked like a parrot but, try as he might, Danny could not make him talk.
And then this young “ancient mariner” was visited by both hope and despair. A lone boat appeared on the horizon. It remained there for hours, at last came much closer, and then was swallowed up by a great bank of clouds rolling over the surface of the sea.