What is Hi-Brasil? It is the “Never-Never-Land,” the land of dreams, the land of longings. In this story it is specifically the land where the lost ships go. Who is the Sea Maid? She is the Spirit of Adventure, the love of whom calls men ever restlessly on. In this story she is the Spirit of the Sea. How skilfully Mr. Durand describes her in sea-words: “With sea-blue eyes” and “Wind-blown” hair; her laugh “Like the ripple of a stream that runs over a pebbly beach”; her song “Like the surge of breakers on a distant reef”; herself “As old as the sea, and a little older than the hills.”
No one but a lover of the sea, and a lover also of bold enterprise and high deeds, could have written such a story, emphasizing as it does somewhat of the theme of Longfellow's Excelsior and Poe's Eldorado—
“Over the mountains
Of the moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride! Boldly ride!...
If you seek for Eldorado!”
“I've never sailed the Amazon,
I've never reached Brazil;
But the Don and Magdalena,
They can go there when they will!”
Peter Luscombe was the dullest man that ever audited an account. Once when his neighbor at a dinner-party, having heard that he was an authority on marine insurance, quoted Longfellow about “the beauty and the mystery of the ships and the magic of the sea,” Peter looked embarrassed and turned the conversation to the subject of charter-parties.
His life was as carefully regulated as Big Ben. He caught the same train every morning, dined at the same hour every evening, indexed his private correspondence, and for recreation read Price's “Calculations.” On Saturday afternoons he played golf.
One Summer a business matter took Peter to St. Mawes, and on his way there he met the Sea Maid. To get to St. Mawes he had to cross Falmouth Harbor by the public ferry.
Though till then he had had no more direct personal experience of the sea than can be obtained from the Promenade at Hove, Peter was so little interested in his surroundings that he spent the first part of the ferry journey making notes of his personal expenditure since leaving London, including tips, on the last page of his pocket-diary. Midway across the harbor he chanced to look up and saw a yawl-rigged fishing-boat—subconsciously he noticed the name Maeldune painted on her bows—running before the wind in the direction of Falmouth Quay. An old, white-haired man, whose cheeks were the color of an Autumn leaf, was sitting amidships tending the sheets, and at the tiller sat a girl—a girl with sea-blue eyes and untidy, wind-blown, dark-brown hair.
She was bending forward, peering under the arched foot of the mainsail, when Peter first caught sight of her. Their eyes met; the girl smiled—and Peter dropped his pocket-diary into the dirty water that washed about the ferryman's boots and stared after the Maeldune till he could no longer distinguish her among the other small craft in the harbor.
When the ferry-boat reached St. Mawes and discharged her other passengers Peter remained in her, and on the return journey sat in the bows straining his eyes to pick out the Maeldune among the other fishing-boats. Falmouth Harbor is two and a half miles wide, and the ferryman refused to be hurried; but at last the quay came in sight, and Peter's heart leaped, for the Maeldune was lying at the steps, and the girl was still on board of her. As soon as the ferry-boat reached the steps Peter jumped ashore and faced the girl. Then he hesitated, embarrassed. He had nothing to say to her, or, rather, no excuse for speaking to her. “I—I—I saw you—as you came up the harbor,” he faltered.