At even, noon, and morning
I'd follow after him,
And o'er the bulwark leaning,
He'd say, "What see I there,
That shines so gay and golden?
A lock of my love's hair."'
Then the boys burst out laughing, and there was a chatter as of birds, so that the singer was not suffered to finish his ballad.
They all belonged to an age at which the emotions, the pangs of love, were unfelt, and a song that expressed them touched no fibre in the soul.
But it was other with Jack. He knew the song, and his lips moved as he completed it, and his mind travelled away, not seaward but overland.