They stopped at her house. He helped her out
They stopped at her house. He helped her out.
"Adieu, Monsieur. And again a thousand thanks."
"C'était un vrai plaisir!"
"Monsieur!"
"Madame!"
The cabman looked surprised when ordered to return. He turned and regarded his fare with amazement.
"Quai de la Fraternité," I said.
"Hup, alors!" The cabby shrugged his shoulders. And they trotted ploddingly through the dusk of Pontius Pilate to the burning cloud which was Marseilles....
He knew he should meet her again, and where he should meet her, and he did, on the Prado. He knew when. In the Midi dusk. A touch of mistral was out, and the wind blew seaward. She was sitting down, looking toward Africa.
"You oughtn't to come out here alone," he said. "Marseilles is a bad port."
"I know," she said. "I know. But it draws me, this spot. You leave soon?" she asked.
"In a few days."
"But you will be back."
"Yes, I will be back," he told her. "I don't know why, but I think I'd rather die than not see Marseilles again. It is a second home, and yet I know so few people here."
"If one has the temperament, and conditions are—as they should be—Marseilles is wonderful."
"One could be happy here."
"Yes," and she sighed.
The spell of the archaic dusk came on him again; a dusk old as the world. About them brooded the welter of passion and romance that Marseilles is. Once it was a Phocæan village, and hook-nosed Afric folk had stepped through on long, thin feet. And then had come the Greeks, with their broad, clear brows, their gray eyes. And further back the hairy Gauls had crept, snarling like dogs. And Greece died. And came the clash of the Roman legions, ruthless fighting hundreds, who saw, did massive things. And Rome died. And over the sea came the Saracens, their high heads, their hard,bronzed bodies, their scarlet mouths. And they conquered and builded and lived.... And were hurled back.... Years hummed by, and passion died not, or romance, and it was from Marseilles that a battalion had come to Paris gates singing the song that Rouget de Lisle had written in Strasburg:
Allons, enfants de la Patrie,Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
And passed that day, and came another, when a handful of grizzled veterans left the gates to join their brothers and meet the exiled emperor.... Passion and romance! Their colors were in Marseilles still.... Over inAnse des Catalansweren't there the remains of the village of the sea-Gipsies, who had come none knew whence?... And along the gulf there were settlements of Saracen blood—les Maures, the Provençals called them ... and the shadow of Pontius Pilate wild-eyed in the dusk....
"It's strange"—her voice came gently to him,—"but I can hear you think."
"And I can feel your silence," he said. "Just feel—you—being silent—"
The wind whipped up, grew shrill, grew cold. She shivered in her thin frock.
"You are becoming cold."
"I am cold."
"Then hadn't you better go home—to your house?"
She rose silently. It seemed to him somehow that she had put herself under his care. She was like some gentle little craft that had anchored humbly under the lee of a great ship. He felt somehow that she was a thing to be protected. He hailed a carriage, and she made no protest—all the time under his lee, so needful of protection. It was a shock when they came into the lights of Marseilles to find a proud, grave woman there and not a shrinking, wide-eyed child.... Her face, poised for flight, like a bird's wing; the beautiful, half-opened mouth, the hands, the little feet in their shoes. She was like some beautiful shy deer. And somewhere hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit.... And yet she was smiling....
At the door he made to bid her good-by.
"Would you—would you care to come in?"
"Why—why, yes." He sent the carriage away.
He followed her up the path to the little villa and with her entered the house. There were no servants to answer the door; she let herself in with a latch-key, but so scrupulously clean was theplace, so furnished in its way, that there must have been servants somewhere. The living-room into which she conducted him was spacious and a little bare, though not bare for the Midi—a plain white room, high in the ceiling, with chairs of good line. Here was a big piano, here a fireplace, here a few paintings, colorful landscapes, on the wall. Together they lit candles.
"Back of here is a garden," she said, "where I spend most of the day. And I have a cook"—she smiled—"and a maid who waits on me. And yet I go out to walk on the Prado...."
Shane wasn't surprised. It wasn't home, somehow. The room was like a setting in a play, here light, here shadow.... The paintings, the instrument of music, the chairs, they were not things owned and loved. They were properties.... In the golden candle-light, as she moved, she was like an actress of great restraint. Every step, posture, gesture seemed to have an occult significance. Even her bedroom, away off somewhere, he felt, was not a place where one slept easily and dreamed. It would be like the dressing-room of some woman mummer.... It was all like a play, of which he was seeing a fragment from the wings.... What was it all about? Who was she? And why was his heart a-flutter?
She had taken off her hat, and her hair was coiled close about her exquisite head. White and black, regular, significant, antique—like a cameo of some Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against her gown.... It was like a pose—but unconscious, he knew, utterly unconscious....
"Tell me," she said, "why did you speak to me?"
"I don't know," he said, "I just spoke."
"You weren't"—her words were weighty, picked—"looking for a flirtation with a pretty woman?"
"Why, no. Of course not," he answered. "I never thought—"
"No. No, you didn't." She decided for herself.
She came toward him suddenly in the candle-light. Stood before him.
"Tell me, who are you? What are you?" There was a tragic appeal in her face. "Where do you come from? Where are you going?"
"I don't know." His throat was dry, his heart pounding. "A few days ago I was a contented man, unhappy but contented. And now I don't know."
"And I don't know who I am." Her mouth quivered. "I am two people—three people."
They looked at each other with a sort of agony, as though they had lost something dear to each, and to both of them. They were immensely intimate. He put out his hand....
"Poor ... poor...."
Their hands touched, and there seemed to rush between them, through them, some powerful current; and how it happened he did not know, but they were kissing each other.... He thought with a queer shock, was a woman's mouth so soft, so sweet, so vibrant? He hadn't known. And was he kissing her? And how had it happened? It was impossible!... Or was he dreaming?... Or was he—was he dead?...
She released herself from him for an instant, putting her hands on his shoulders, her eyes looking into his eyes....
"What is your name?"
"Campbell. Shane Campbell."
"Campbell. Shane Campbell. Shane—Shane Campbell. Mine is Claire-Anne—Claire-Anne Godey."
It seemed to him as he went to Les Bains that next evening that the world had somehow changed into another dimension, so much clearer the air was, so much brighter the stars.... He had discovered a higher, more rarefied stratum of life, in the dim, keen atmosphere of which things took on incomparable beauty and mystery, so that the water on his left hand, unseen, yet so blue, was not the Gulf of Lyons, but the whole Mediterranean, which washed Genoa and Naples and Sicily, and the little islands of the Greeks, and the barbaric shores of Africa, Morocco, and Algiers; and Gibraltar, where the English were, like an armed sentry in a turret. The ships in the harbor were not ships of commerce, but stately entities, each whispering to each in theshush-shushof water and wind, telling of the voyages they had made, adventurous as sturgeons. Even from the mud-and-rush huts along the sea-shore came the note of brave romance. And the softly singing trees! And in the great amphitheater of the woods no longer the shade of Pontius Pilate gnawed his bitten nails, but more gallant presences were, gray-eyed Greek women, with proud composed faces and eloquent hands, and Saracens calmly awaiting the morrow's battle, and troubadours puzzling keenly for a rime.... They were not colored thoughts, but sentient presences. Spirit and thought had united in him into a being like a bird, leaving the earth, and flying into a realm of ancient forgotten beauty, spirit being the will, and thought the vibrating wing.... How harmonious everything was, the stars, the earth, the sea, the people! How clear it had all become! How one!...
He came to her in her garden where she sat beneath a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking trees.Zig-zig-zig-zig.But they were no longer strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high atmosphere in which he was....
"Claire-Anne! Claire-Anne...."
"Yes ... yes, lover...."
"Claire-Anne!"
She stood up as he took her lovely, pale hands. There was no shame to her glance, nothing but a wonderful frankness, her eyes going to his like brave winged things.
"Claire-Anne, I want to ask you something."
"Yes ... Lover...."
"Claire-Anne, when will you marry me?"
Her hands never quivered, but he was awarethat her mouth did, in the high diluted starlight.
"Why do you want to marry me? Is it because ...? Do you feel bound?... or ... just why?"
"I want to be with you, Claire-Anne."
"Then—dearest, does it matter to go before the mayor and arrange about property? And to go before a priest and make promises—to God!... Sit down, lover; sit down with me here, in the dusk, under the tree."
She still clasped both his hands. He might have been talking to some beautiful disembodied spirit, as Pontius Pilate was a poor panic-stricken spirit, or to something he had conjured out of his head, but for her firm, warm hands. To-night it was she had strength....
"Dearest, promises are so easy to make. I have made promises, oh, so many promises!... And life or destiny.... And when you can't keep them, your heart breaks. You know nothing of me—Shane...."
"I don't want to know; I just want you, Claire-Anne!"
"You must know something. I was just a girl, well brought up, well educated.... I dreamed of being a great actress. I was an actress, but I was ...manquée... didn't succeed, get success.... And then I married, and myhusband died.... And here I am.... And there are other things you mustn't know.... Not that they are dear to me; oh, no!... but you must never hear them.... O Shane, if seven years ago.... But Destiny or life wouldn't let us. And now we can only cheat him, and that only for a while.... Because Destiny is all-seeing and jealous and cruel.... Only for a while, a sweet while...."
"But, Claire-Anne, I don't understand—"
"Don't understand, don't, my lover. Don't anything.... Only let me give all I have, can give to you, and let me take what you care to give in return, only that.... O Shane, we are two people in a dark wood, and it is lonely and terrifying.... And we have met, and our hands ...se sont serrées... gripped and held.... And we aren't lonely any more, or afraid. And you have a picture in your mind of me, a beautiful, warm picture.... But if the night passed, and we came to the meadow-lands.... O Shane, don't let's go into the light—not into the open, not into the light.... Oh, no! no!"
"But, Claire-Anne...."
"Come closer, Shane. The night is empty. There are only we two in the world.... Come close. Closer. Closer still...."
He was sitting in her garden one sunset, under the mulberry-tree, and she had gone into the house for a minute, moving with the firm, gracious walk of hers that was like the firm swimming of swans. In the little hush of sunset, and she gone, there came a sudden knowledge to him.... For a space of time, how long he knew not, he was in an Antrim study.... Without, the sun had gone down, and there was the purple, twilight water, and the gentle calling of the cricket.... And within was a gray head that had fallen on a book ... fallen ... fallen as the sun went down.
"Why, Uncle Robin!" he called.
Then came a great gush of tears to his heart and eyes....
She came from the house, as again he became cognizant of the Midi garden instead of the Antrim glen, of the Mediterranean instead of the waters of Moyle. She came down the dusky pathway. At a little distance she saw his face. She stopped short, her face white....
"Shane! Shane! what is wrong? Are you hurt? Ill?"
"My Uncle Robin is dead, Claire-Anne."
She looked at him for a little instant, not quite understanding. She came to him swiftly as a swallow. She sat close beside him. Her arm went through his. Her hands clasped his hands.
"Why didn't you tell me, heart?" she whispered.
"I just knew this instant. I felt, saw.... We were that close ... my Uncle Robin!Beannacht De ar a anam!God's blessing on his soul!"
She never spoke. She never stirred. She hardly breathed. She was just there, her hands, firm and strong, on his, did he want her.
"Was it ... a hard death, Shane?"
"No; I seemed to see him, asleep, among his books."
"His books were his friends ... you told me....
"Yes, dear. His life was with them."
"And he wasn't a young man, your Uncle Robin?"
"Eight and sixty years of age."
"Is it so ill, heart, to go quickly, quietly, with your friends about you, on an autumn afternoon?"
"No, dear, not ill. Very rightly ... I think. But there is something.... Something is gone from the world, like a fine tree from a garden....And he was awful' dear to me, my Uncle Robin.... It will be a hard thing to go home, and he not there to come and ask: 'Are you all right, laddie? You're no sick?' Claire-Anne, I'll be thinking long...."
She sat with him in silence in the garden, and after a little while got up and went without a word.... And he sat in the garden thinking to himself, had he been lax to Uncle Robin in any way? He might have written oftener. It wasn't fair to have kept the old man worried and he an apprentice at sea. Yes, he could have written, could have written oftener. And thought more. And there were books he might have brought the old man—books from 'Frisco and New York and Naples. The book-stores were so far from the quays, and he had put it off. And he could have so easily.... When one is young, one is so thoughtless.... A message from somewhere ran into his consciousness like a ripple of code-flags: 'It doesn't matter, dear laddie. Don't be taking on. Don't be blaming yourself. You were the dear lad ... and I'm happy....'
Ah, yes, but a great tree was gone from the garden. An actuality had been converted into thought and emotion, and thought and emotion may be all that endure, and an actuality be unreal... but an actuality is so warm ... so reassuring....
He rose and went toward the house, and as he walked he met her....
"Claire-Anne, do you mind if I go back to the ship?... Somehow, I'm a little lost...."
"There is a carriage waiting for you outside."
For the first time it occurred to him that in this occult experience she had not uttered one jarring note. She had not asked questions, nor had she tried to argue with him, as other women would have, telling him he fancied all this. Nor had she bothered him with vain, unwelcome sentiment. She had just—stood by, as at sea. And how swiftly she had divined his need of privacy, of his own ship!
"There are none like you in this world, Claire-Anne," he told her.
"I am what you make me, Shane—what you need of me." Her hand sought his in the stilly dusk. "Come back only when you are ready dearest ... dearest ... I am here! Always here!"
Though she never said so, yet he knew shewanted to go on board the ship that was so much of his life, and one day he had her rowed across to theUlster Lady. He smiled as he saw how firmly she got on board, though ships were unknown to her. Queer, how she never lost dignity, grace. And it was so easy for a woman to look silly, undignified, getting on board ship. She never disappointed him....
She mused over the sweet line of the schooner, the tapering masts, the snug canvas, the twinkling brass. The wake of a passing paddle-steamer made the boat pitch gently. It was like breathing.
"She is so much a pretty lady," Claire-Anne said. "So much like you, Shane, in a way. She might be a young sister—a young, loved sister. And where is your place on board when she sails?"
He pointed her out the space behind wheel and binnacle.
"Whenever there's any need, I'm there, just there."
"And Shane, great waves like you see in pictures—great enormous waves, does she stand those?"
"Yes, great waves, like you see in pictures, she stands those. Drives through them, and over them, and under them."
"And Solomon said"—she was just thinkingaloud—"that he couldn't understand the way of a ship on the sea. And he was immensely wise. Dearest ... it can't be just wood and canvas, a ship ... power and grace and beauty.... It's like great people...."
"They're as different as people are, Claire-Anne."
"Are they, Shane? I knew they weren't ... just things."
He took her below in the dusk of his cabin. She filled the space like some gracious green tree.
"And here is where I live on board ship."
The Aberdeen terrier came forward to greet her, his tail waving gently, his ears up, his brown eyes grave and warm.
"Duine uasal! Duine uasal!" she knelt to him.
"You remember?" He minded he had told her casually of the dog's name.
"Of course I remember! Shane, what doesDuine uasalmean?"
"Gentilhomme," he translated.
"He has the eyes," she said.
The framed manuscript of his father's verses caught her eyes, and she looked at him in inquiry.
"What is it?"
"A poem of my father's, in Gaidhlig, Claire-Anne. 'The Bed of Rushes.'"
"How queer the letters are! Slim and graceful, and powerful, too. Would you read it, Shane?"
"Leaba luachra," he read, "a bed of rushes,bhi fúm aréir, was beneath me last night,agas do chaitheas amach é le banaghadb an lae, and I threw it out with the whitening of day.Thainic mo chéad grádh le mo thaobh, my hundred loves came to my side;guala ee qualainn, shoulder to shoulder,agas béal re béal, and mouth to mouth."
"Now I know you better, Shane."
"How, dearest?"
"I know how you come by your—your sense of beauty, Shane. It's from your father. You have it just as he had. But he could say and you can't, Shane. You have it, but it doesn't come out that way. It comes out in the sailing of the ship, Shane. You must sail beautifully. Shane, I should love to see you sail."
With a quick movement she dropped on her knees, and her beautiful dark head on the pillow of his bed.
"Couldn't you take me with you once, Shane, when you sail? Away on just one voyage?"
"Of course I could, dearest, and will."
"Would you, my heart? Would you?" She stood up again, and swift tears came to her eyes.
"I couldn't come," she said.
"But, Claire-Anne—"
"No," she said. She turned her back to him, so that he shouldn't see her face, and her voice vibrated. "No, Shane dear. No. You go to sea and sail your ships, and take care of them in the tempest and coax them in light weather. And go from port to port, watching the strange cities and the peoples, and seeing into them, with ...tes yeux d'enfant... your eyes of a child.... And have your life, free, big, clean.... And just in a corner ...le plus petit coin... keep me ... so when you come to Marseilles, you will come up the garden path in the dusk, and call, 'Claire-Anne!'" There was something like a sob from her. "Just say, 'Claire-Anne'...."
She turned around and caught his hands for a minute, looked at him, smiled, laughed.... From his desk she picked up the Young Pretender's dagger.
"What is this for, Shane? Is this yours?"
"Mine now, Claire-Anne; but it was—some one else's once. My Uncle Alan, Alan Donn, gave it to me."
"Yes?..."
"It belonged once to Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender. He wore it at his knee in '45. Do you remember, Claire-Anne? Helanded in Scotland and advanced on England, and got as far as Derby at the head of the Scottish clans and Jacobite gentlemen. 'Black Friday' they called it in London."
"But he never got to London."
"No, he never got to London. Crash and whir of battle, and when the smoke cleared, there were the gallant Highland clansmen scattered, and the sturdy English nobles, and the bonny Irish gentlemen. And a king on the run!"
"And, Shane, what happened to him after that?"
"I think—my history may not be right, but I think he spent the rest of his life a pensioner of the king of France, playing petty politics, drinking, and accepting love from romantic women, and loyalty from the beaten clans."
"What a pity, Shane! What a pity!"
"That he failed, dearest? I don't know."
"Not that he failed, Shane! No! The most gallant fail, nearly always fail, for they take the greatest odds. But that he lived too long, Shane ... the high moment gone...."
She looked at the dagger again that had once snuggled to Prince Tearloch's knee, hefted it, caressed it.
"Shane dearest, why didn't he use his own knife to—set himself free?"
"I don't know."
"I think I know."
She faced him suddenly.
"Shane, why didn't somebody do it for him?"
"I suppose they couldn't see the end, Claire-Anne. They couldn't foresee the king of France's charity, the tricked women, the wine-stained cards. There's many the Scots gentlemen who would have—set him free."
"But they didn't, Shane dearest. It seems—Destiny must always win. Shane, what is that poem in Gaidhlig about the world, the verses you once said?"
"Treasgair an saoghal, agus tigeann an garth mar smal.Alaistir, Cæsar, 's an méad do bhi d'a bpairtTa an Theamhair na fear agas feâch an Traoi mar ta—Life goes conquering on. The winds forever blowAlexander, Cæsar, and the crash of their fighting menTara is grass, and see how Troy is low—"
He stopped with a little shock, for her face was a mask of tears.
"Dearest, dearest, it's only an old, sad story. It has nothing to do with us. Claire-Anne—"
"Is any story old, Shane? Is any story ever new? Isn't it always the same story?"
She looked at the dagger for an instant more, and put it down with a little sob.
"Poor gentleman!"
From his cabin below he could hear the Belfast mate roaring at the helmsman:
"What kind of steering do you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and less of your damned luffin'."
"Keep her full, sir!" the steersman repeated.
"Look at your foretopsail! Bouse it, blast ye! Bouse it! You Skye cutthroats!"
If the nor'easter held, Shane calculated, he could run through Biscay full, come into the Mediterranean on a broad reach, and jam her straight at Marseilles. About him was the tremor as she took the head seas. Plunge! Tremble! Dash on! Overhead the squeaking of the sheets, the squeal of blocks, thethrap-thrap-thrapof the lee halyards, the melancholy whining of the gulls. With luck he would be in Marseilles within the week. And if the wind swung westward after he left Gibraltar to port,he would nip off hours, a day even. And every hour counted until the moment he went up the dusky path and called, "Claire-Anne!"
He had never before driven theUlster Ladyas he was driving her now. Before, he had been content to get what he could out of her, coaxing her, nursing her, as a trainer does a horse he is fond of; but now he was riding her like a jockey intent on winning a race. On deck the crew wondered what had got into the old man, as they called him, for all his twenty-eight years.
"Before, he was a sailor," the isles crew complained. "Is he now a merchant at last?A Righ is truagh!O King, the pity!"
But it was not interest in cargoes that compelled him; it was the thought of a face like the wing of a bird, ready to soar. The dark, gracious face, with the eyes where emotion swirled like a mill-race, the parted ruddy lips-La Mielleuse—mouth of honey. And the word he must not say aloud, like some occult word of magic until a certain moment should come:
"Claire-Anne!" Just "Claire-Anne!"
Before he had left Marseilles he had not been able to think of her, to weigh what happened, to understand. Things were too close. But at sea, and in the dusk of the Antrim glen, and in Belfast and Liverpool, he had had time to viewthe incident in perspective; to stand aside, as one stands back from a picture, and appreciate the color, the line, the truth; to see that that rich purple, that splash of orange, that rippling, rich silver-gray are not spots like flowers, but a definite design....
In Antrim he had remembered Dancing Town, the vision of Fiddlers' Green. Fourteen years before!
And now that he remembered, it seemed to him foolish not to have known he was sailing somewhere. He was always sailing.... And unexpectedly, after he had given up all hope, under his lee bow had risen suddenly Fiddlers' Green.... Once before he thought he had made port there, but that only made this island the true one.... For there were always two things, and the second was right.... False dawn and dawn; the False Cape and Cape Horn; the Southern Crosses, the false and true....
And he would tell her this, when he met her again, of how he had been thinking, and discovered her to be the true life....
The wife he had married and buried seven years before he thought of now; she was the second woman he had known, his mother the first. And from the cold precipice of his mother he had fled into the flinty fields of Moyra Dolan....He felt a little sorry for the boy he was seven years before—so young, so gallant, so wrong.... He had thought that all there was in life was a home to return to, a wife, children.... He had wanted an acre of land in the sun, where all the world was his. When one was young, one knew so little.... Wisdom came with the lapping of the waves, and years of quiet thinking under the gigantic stars.... A plot of land he had wanted then, and now he had the stars, they belonging more to him than to the astrologers who conned them, the fields, more than to the tillers who cultivated them, the sea than to the fishermen who trawled.... He was one with everything, understanding everything, its immense harmony.... From hard earth and wet sea he had arisen on swift, dark pinions until he had been one with the spirit that infused all earth and sea and sky holding the multitudinous atoms in One with immense will and scheme.... And it was she who had given them to him—Claire-Anne ... the wings of the morning.... The flutter of her white hands ... the eyes that looked and drooped, looked, drooped ... the little catch in her breath....
His life opened before him now, like a fair seaway. About his appointed tasks he would goin his appointed life ... sailing ships with needed cargoes ... a despatch messenger for the peoples of the world over the vast solitudes of sea ... doing his work well and willingly ... and asking no reward but that the bird of dusk, the mouth of honey, be his to love and be loved by ... to melt with and be one in occult alchemy of soul and mind and body ... to get strength and knowledge, and the understanding which is more than strength and knowledge....
He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-five. There were twenty years before them still, twenty years of love and understanding, and then a strange happy twilight, like the dusk of Antrim, that gives way hardly to the short night.... Some day she would marry him and come to his house ... some day when something that was wrong in her heart was righted and forgotten, something he had no wish to intrude upon, so closely did she conceal it.... There was a locked, haunted room in her heart ... poor heart!... but one day the presence would be exercised, and the room swept and garnished.... Some day she would marry him, and he would bring her home to Ulster.... And who better than she could understand the springy heather and the blue smoke-reek, the crickets of the eveningand the curlew's call? And in the house where his mother was cold and arrogant, would be a warm and gracious lady ... Claire-Anne!...
God! he was thinking long to be in Marseilles again, to go up the dusky path, to call, "Claire-Anne!"
The big Belfast mate larruped down the short companionway.
"How's she doing, Mr. McKinstry?"
"She's doing fine, sir. If I may say so, there's not a better boat sails the water, not theSovereign of the Seasitself. Nor a better crew to handle things, not on board the king's yacht."
"Nor a better mate, Mr. McKinstry."
"Ah, well, sir; we do wir best."
He tumbled on deck again, and Shane could hear him roar from amidships:
"Lay forward, a couple of you damned farmers, and see if you can't get more out of those jibs. Faster! faster! You're as slow as the grace of God at a miser's funeral.... If I only had a crew...."
She stopped in her swift flight to himthrough the dusk of the Midi garden.
"Dearest, why is your face so white? Your hands bruised?"
"The consul said something to me—about you—and I knocked him down."
"Oh!" she said, a shocked little cry, and: "Oh!" a drawn-out wail of pain. "Why did you strike him?"
"Because he lied about you."
Her face was turned from him, in the dusk of the crickets, toward the wooded amphitheater, where dead Pontius roved wild-eyed in the dusk, where Lazarus tossed uneasily in his second sleep, where the Greeks lay in alien soil, and the shadows of Roman legionaries looked puzzled at the flat sea, not recognizing busy Tiber—her back was to him, her head up in pain, her nerve-wrenched hands uneasy, white....
"He didn't lie," she said at last. "Oh, you'd have known it sooner or later. No! no! He didn't lie."
"Claire-Anne!"
"He didn't lie. I was just a fool to think—oh, well, he didn't lie. No, no!" she repeated. "He didn't lie." She threw out a hand hopelessly. "He didn't lie."
He went up to her in the dusk, put his handsgently on her shoulders. The quivering frame became still suddenly, with a greater nervousness. She was like a deer ready to bound away....
"I don't see what I could have done, Claire-Anne. But—can I do anything now?"
She turned toward him suddenly. Her face was a mask of pain—and surprise.
"Then you haven't grown cold to me, unmerciful, ... or gross?"
"Why, no, Claire-Anne!"
"And you know."
"I—know, but I don't understand...."
She gave a queer, little shuddering cry, half laugh, half sob. She moved over to the seat by the whispering mulberry-tree, and dropped in it, her hands covering her face.
"All the wrong," she said, "that people call wrong I've done I didn't mind. But the one decent thing—of loving you—that's kept me awake all the time you were away. It's been like a sin, letting you love me. The rest was destiny, but this one thing was—I."
She suddenly raised her face, her eyes shining through the humid mask of it.
"Would you—could you—understand?"
"Tell me, Claire-Anne, what you want to."
She drew a short gasping breath, turned herhead away, looked up, turned it away again, paused for breath, gripped his hand by the wrist....
"I ... I ... I was the child of actors, and they died, and there was enough money to bring me up and educate me, and give me my chance on the stage.... And I wasn't good enough.... I was too much myself. Couldn't quite be other characters. I don't know if you understand.... But ... then a man got infatuated with me and married me.... And later he wished he'd married a—comfortable woman with a fortune.... And then he died and left me ... not very much.... But that was not the reason.... I was left, how do you say?... stranded. I had no career, no husband, no child, no business. France, it is not easy ... not easy anywhere.... Friends? People are too busy.... And I was ... just there.... And all around me life bubbled and flowed, and I was ... not dead, not alive ... and alone ... I might have been a leper, but even lepers have colonies, and some one to be kind to them ... not dead, not alive ... and alone. I was so young.... It was unfair. Life was everywhere like a sparkling wine ... but where I was, was flat....
"And then—then I met a man ... it waspleasant for a while—to have some one to talk to, to go around with. It's so pleasant to laugh. You don't know how pleasant until you haven't laughed for a long time.... He didn't want to marry ... and in the end it was a choice of—oh, well ... or going back to being not dead, not alive ... and I couldn't go, just couldn't. And he gave me presents of money.... And then he got married. I don't blame him ... a comfortable woman with a fortune ... but I wasn't left for long.... Where one goes, others always follow.... There's a sort of ...sentier intuitif, a psychic path....
"And I wasn't so ashamed ... I was a little glad I had a place in the world ... a work even.... And every one might despise me.... I had a place.... I was no longer not dead, not alive.... I was even thankful for that.... Until I met you with your—terrible courtesy, with your understanding.... My head and my heart melted, and my body, too, and all had been so firm, so decided.... And I dreamed that I could snatch a while from destiny.... But—you see.... What the consul said was true, so ... dearest—but I mustn't ever call you dearest again."
"Claire-Anne!"
"Well, then—dearest, you see why I couldn'tmarry you when you asked." She laughed bitterly. "If you had only known...."
He took a terrible grip on himself, faced her, looked at her.
"Claire-Anne, will you marry me now?"
"I don't know why you say it, but I know one thing: you are true. And I thank you ... but please don't make me cry any more. I have cried so much when you were away.... If only five years ago before I was ...estropiée... crippled....
"Destiny...."
Dusk had gone; darkness had come, and now darkness itself would leave soon, for the third quarter of a great saffron moon showed its edge in the eastward. Marseilles was like the pale light of a candle. And a great palpable darkness had settled like water in the hollow of the woods.
"Dearest"—her voice took sudden strength—"will you forgive me? I don't say that just as if I'd done a small wrong. But will a bigpower come out of your heart and say: 'It's all right, Claire-Anne. I understood.' It will be so much for me to know that—in the days when you are gone—"
"But, Claire-Anne, I'm not gone—"
"You must go, dearest. You must go now. Don't you see?" Her voice grew gentle. "You couldn't stay any more. It wouldn't be like you, somehow. And I wouldn't have you spoiled in my eyes ... darling, you could never be ... but you must go...."
"And you, Claire-Anne—"
"Destiny ... a long, lean finger ... a path...."
"But you never know—"
"We know, we poor women, Shane. We know.... Shane, don't you understand ... what makes the ... girl in the archway, the emperor's mistress, drink, take ether ... do strange horrors?.... They know.... And they want to escape from seeing it ... for an instant even ... the terrible story of theBelle Heaulmière... the 'Armorer's Daughter':
"Ainsi le bon temps regretonsEntre nous, pauvres vielles sotes,Assises bas, à crouppetons,Tout en ung tas commes pelotes,A petit feu de chenevotesTost allumées, tost estaintes:Et jadis fusmes si mignotes!...Ainsi emprent à maintes et maintes.
"Do you understand, Shane, do you understand? So we regret the good old times, poor old light women, gathered together like fagots, and hunkering over a straw fire, soon lit, soon out—tost allumées, tost estaintes... and once we were so dainty. To many and many's the one it happens.Pauvres vielles sotes!Poor old light women, Shane....Et jadis fusmes si mignotes!... Dainty as I am, they were once.... And do you blame them now when see it coming ... the drink, the ether ... the abominable things...."
"O my God! Claire-Anne!"
"Heart of hearts, Shane. I once escaped to light, where they escape to oblivion.... Once I had you, and all my life I'll remember it.... All my life I'll remember: I once knew a man.... And it will be a help, so much a help...."
"Oh, Claire-Anne, it can't be!"
"It must be, dearest heart. It is—decreed. Darling, sometimes I thought—Do you remember your showing me the poor prince's dagger, and our talking about him—setting himself free—and I said I thought I could understand why he did not.... I've wanted to, myself.... But.... There's a way you're brought up, when you're young.... They put such fear of God in you ... such fear of hell ... you never could—throw things down and go straight to Him, and say: 'I couldn't. I just simply couldn't. I hadn't the strength. I couldn't ... just....' And they never think of Him saying: 'Of course you couldn't.... And it was all My fault. I wasn't looking.... I've so much to think of.... You did right to come to Me....' But, no! no! One fears. They teach you so much fear, Shane, when you are young ... so that even this is better—this—game, where none win.... And so—one goes on...."
She rose suddenly and clutched his shoulders in panic. Her mouth twisted in piteous agony....
"Oh, but dearest, dearest,pauvres vielles sotes, poor old light women.... Shane,assises bas, à crouppetons, in an archway, hoping for a drunken farmer with a couple of sous ... and so cold, so cold, with a little fire of straw stalks ...tost allumées, tost estaintes!" ...
"No, Claire-Anne! no!"
"A drunken farmer, or traveling pedler....Et jadis fusmes si mignotes... and so dainty once!"
"No!" His voice took the ring of decision. She didn't hear him. Her voice broke into a torrent of sobs.
"Take me in your arms, Shane, once more. And let my heart come into your heart, where it's so warm ... and I'll have something to remember in the days when it will be ... so cold, so cold ... and I'll be there warming old bones....A petit feu de chenevotes.... Shane, dearest, please...."
He took her in his arms, and her body seemed to be some light envelope in which a great turmoil of spirit beat, as a wild bird beats against a cage.... He could hardly hold her body so much was her tortured sobbing.... So much did what was within wheel and beat, beat and wheel, in unendurable panic. Her voice murmured in his wet shoulder:
"Pauvre vielle sote!O Shane, Shane ...pauvre vielle sote!"...
Above him, to starboard, he could hear thechurning of the tug that was to take them from the docks to the open sea. Overhead the pilot was stamping impatiently. Forward the mate was roaring like a bull:
"Where is that damned apprentice? Tell him to lay aft and bear a hand with the warps."
In a minute or so he would have to go on the poop and give orders to let go and haul in. The tug was blowing, "Hurry up...." He ought to be on deck now.... He hated to go up ... he hated to see the last of Marseilles ... he would never see Marseilles again....
Was all ready? Yes, all was ready. Cargo, supplies, sea-chest, everything for the long voyage he had decided—had to decide—on at the last minute. Forward across the Atlantic to where the sou'east trades blew, and then south'ard reaching under all sail—the fleecy clouds, the bright constellations of the alien pole, the strange fish-like birds, the flying-fish, the bonita, the albacore; the chill gust from the River Plate; the roar of the gales of the forties; the tremendous fight around the Horn, with a glimpse of land now and then as they fought for easting—the bleak rocks of Diego Ramirez and the Iledefonsos, and perhaps the blue ridge of Cape Horn, or of the False Cape; then, northward to Callao... anywhere, everywhere ... new seas, new lands, new cities ... but never again Marseilles....
And he would never see her again,La Mielleuse—couldn't if he wanted to ... never again ... irrevocable.... On that pillow she had laid her head, her dark darling head!... And last night he had seen it for the last time, dark, smiling in sleep, on a snowy pillow.... He remembered as he might remember a strange pantomime.... His going to his coat for—what he had there ... the silent tiptoe ... the gentle raising of her left arm, as she smiled in her sleep ... the sudden weakness at her soft warm beauty ... the decision.... Of course he had done right!... Of course!... Of course!...
Overhead the pilot stamped on the deck in a flurry of impatience. The tug wailed in irritation. He must get on deck....
He threw one last glance around.... He had everything he needed for himself.... Nothing lacking.... His eyes paused for a moment on his desk. Wait! Where was the dagger? Prince Charles's dagger?
He gripped himself in fright. Was he going—had he gone—mad? He knew where that was ... he knew ... he knew.... It was....
"Ogh!" A flash of horror went over him.... But he had done right ... of course he had done right....
"All's ready, sir," the mate called in to his cabin.
"Yes?..."
"Man, you're no' ill?" the mate looked at him, queerly.
"Of course I'm not ill." He swung on deck. "All right? Let go aft, then, and haul in. Tug a little westward: a little more westward. Hard a port, Mr. McKinstry. All right! Let go all, for'a'd.... She's off...."
"Ya Zan," came his wife's slow grave voice, "O Shane, when your ship is in trouble, or does not go fast, do the passengers beat you?"
"Of course not," Campbell laughed. "What put that in your little head?"
"When I went with my uncle, Arif Bey, on the pilgrimage to Mecca—Arif was a Moslem that year"—she bit the thread of the embroidery she was doing with her little sharp teeth,tkk!—"our ship anchored for the night inBirkat Faraun—Pharaoh's Bay. In the morning it would not move, so the Maghrabi pilgrims beat the captain terribly. And once at Al-Akabah, when the captain lost sight of shores for one whole long day, the Maghrabis beat him again. They said he should have known better. Don't—don't they ever beat you,ya Zan?"
"Not yet, Fenzile. They only beat bad skippers."
"But ourRaiswas a good sailor. He must have been a good sailor, Zan. He was very old.He was very pious, too. He said the prayers. Do you ever say the prayers, Zan, when the sea looks as if it were about to be angry?"
"What sort of prayers, Fenzile?"
"Oh, prayers. Let me see." Her dark eyes had the look he loved, as if she had turned around and were rummaging within herself, as a woman seeks diligently and yet slowly in a chest. "Oh, like the Moslem'sHizb al-Bahr. You ought to know that prayer,ya Zan. It will make you safe at sea. I wonder you, a greatRais, do not know that prayer."
"What is the prayer, Fenzile?"
"'We pray Thee for safety in our goings forth and our standings still.... Subject unto us this sea, even as Thou didst subject the deep to Moses, and as Thou didst subject the fire to Abraham, and as Thou didst subject the iron to David, and as Thou didst subject the wind and the devils and djinns and mankind to Solomon, and as Thou didst subject the moon andAl-Burahto Mohammed, on whom be Allah's mercy and His blessing! And subject unto us all the seas in earth and heaven, in Thy visible and in Thine invisible worlds, the sea of this life and the sea of futurity. O Thou Who reignest over everything and unto Whom all things return.' ... You must knowthat prayer, and say that prayer,ya Zan. What do you do when it is very stormy?"
"Oh, take in as little sail as possible and keep shoving ahead."
"I don't understand," she let the embroidery fall in her lap. "I see your ship from the quays and I can't understand how you guide such a big ship. And how you go at night, Zan, that I cannot understand. It is so dark at night. There is a terrible lot I do not understand. I am very stupid."
"You are very dear and darling, Fenzile. You understand how to take care of a house and how to be very beautiful, and be very loving—"
"Do I, Zanim? That is not hard. That is not very much. That is not like sailing a ship on the sea."
Without, Beirut seethed with life. Thin, gaunt dogs barked and snarled in the narrow staired streets. Came the cry of the donkey-boys. Came the cry of the water-sellers. Came the shouts of the young Syrians over the gammon game. Loped the laden camels. Tramped the French soldiers. Came a new hum....
Fenzile rose and went through the courtyard, past the little fountain with the orange-trees, past the staircase to the upper gallery, came tothe barred iron gates, looked a moment, moved modestly back into the shadows....
"O look,ya Zan," her grave voice became excited. "Come quickly. See. It is Ahmet Ali, with his attendants and a lot of people following him."
"And who is Ahmet Ali?"
"Ahmet Ali! don't you know, Zanim? The great wrestler, Ahmet Ali. The wrestler from Aleppo...."
Through the grilled door, in the opal shade of the walls, Shane saw the wrestler stroll down the street; a big bulk of a man in white robe and turban, olive-skinned, heavy on his feet, seeming more like a prosperous young merchant than a wrestling champion of a vilayet. Yet underneath the white robes Shane could sense the immense arms and shoulders, the powerful legs. Very heavily he moved, muscle-bound a good deal, Shane thought; a man for pushing and crushing and resisting, but not for fast, nervous work, sinew and brain coördinating like the crack of a whip. A Cornish wrestler would turn him insideout within a minute; a Japanese would pitch him like a ball before he had even taken his stance. But once he had a grip he would be irresistible.
"So that's Ahmet Ali."
"Yes, Zan," Fenzile clapped her hands with delight, like a child seeing a circus procession. "Oh, he is a great wrestler. He beat Yussuf Hussein, the Cairene, and he beat a great Russian wrestler who came on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And he beat a French sailor. And he beat a Tartar. Oh, he is a great wrestler, Ahmet Ali."
The wrestler had come nearer. Behind him came four or five supporters, in cloth white as his. Behind them came a ruck of Syrian youths, effeminate, vicious. Came a croud of donkey-boys, impish, black. The wrestler walked more slowly as he approached to pass the iron doors. And Shane was startled into a sudden smile at the sight of his face—a girl's face, with a girl's eyes. And in his hand was a rose. A wrestler with a rose!
"Why, a man could kill him."
"Oh, no! Oh, no, Zan!" Fenzile said. "He is very strong. He conquered Yussuf Hussein, the Cairene, and Yussuf Hussein could bend horseshoes with his bare hands. He is very strong, very powerful Ahmet Ali."
The wrestler was walking slowly past the house throwing glances through the grill with his full girl's eyes. A quick suspicion came into Campbell's mind. He turned to his wife.
"Does he come past here often?"
"Yes, yes, Zan. Every day."
"Does he stop and look into the court like that, every time?"
"Yes, Zan. Every time," she smiled.
"Do you know whom he's looking for?"
"Yes, Zan. For me."
Campbell's hand shot out suddenly and caught her wrist.
"Fenzile," his voice was cold. "You aren't carrying on with, encouraging this—Ahmet Ali?"
"Zan Cam'el," her child's eyes flashed unexpectedly. "I am no cheap Cairene woman. I am a Druse girl. The daughter of a Druse Bey."
"I am sorry, Fenzile."
She looked at him steadily with her great green eyes, green of the sea, and as he looked at her sweet roundish face, her little mouth half open in sincerity, her calm brow, her brown arch of eyebrow, she seemed to him no more than a beautiful proud child. There was no guile in her.
"You mustn't be foolish, you know, Fenzile."
"Severim Seni.I love only you, Zan. But itis so funny to see him go by, I must always smile. Don't you think it funny, Zan?"
"No, I don't think it at all funny."
"Oh, but it is funny, Zan. A big strong wrestler like that to be foolish over a very little woman. And for a cheap showman of the market-place to be lifting his eyes to a daughter of the Druse emirs. It is funny."
"It isn't funny. And he isn't much of a wrestler anyway."
"Oh, but he is, Zan. He is a very great wrestler. They say he threw and killed a bear."
"O kooltooluk. Hell! I could throw him myself."
She said nothing, turning her head, and reaching for her embroidery.
"Don't you believe me, Fenzile? I tell you I could make mince-meat of him."
"Of course, Zan. Of course you could." And she smiled. But this time it wasn't the delighted smile of a child. It was the grave patient smile of a wise woman. And Shane knew it. Past that barrier he could not break. And on her belief he could make no impress. There was no use arguing, talking. She would just smile and agree. And her ideal of strength and power would be the muscle-bound hulk of the Aleppo man, with the girl's face and the girl's eyes, andthe rose in his hand. And Shane, all his life inured to sport, hard as iron, supple as a whip, with his science picked up from Swedish quartermasters and Japanese gendarmes, from mates and crimps in all parts of the world, would always be in her eyes an infant compared to the monstrous Syrian! Not that it mattered a tinker's curse, but—
Oh, damn the wrestler from Aleppo!
He had thought, when he left Liverpool on a gusty February day, of all the peace and quiet, of the color and life there would be on the Asian shore ... Europe had somehow particularly sickened him on this last voyage.... All its repose was sordid, all its passion was calculated. England and its queen mourned the sudden death of the prince consort, but it mourned him with a sort of middle-class domesticity, and no majesty. So a grocer's family might have mourned, remembering how well papa cut the mutton.... He was so damned good at everything, Albert was, and he approved of art and science—within reason.... There was a contest for a humanideal in America, and in the ports of England privateers were being fitted out, to help the South, as the Greeks might, for a price.... And Napoleon, that solemn comedian, was making ready his expedition to Mexico, with fine words and a tradesman's cunning.... And the drums of Ulster roared for Garibaldi, rejoicing in the downfall of the harlot on seven hills, as Ulster pleasantly considered the papal states, while Victor Emmanuel, sly Latin that he was, thought little of liberty and much about Rome.... Aye, kings!
And so a great nostalgia had come over Shane Campbell on this voyage for the Syrian port and the wife he had married there. He wanted sunshine. He wanted color. He wanted simplicity of life. Killing there was in Syria, great killing too. But it was the sort of killing one understood and could forgive. A Druse disliked a Maronite Christian, so he went quietly and knifed him. Another Maronite resented that, and killed a Druse; and they were all at it, hell-for-leather. But it was passion and fanaticism, not high-flown words and docile armies and the tradesmen sneaking up behind.... Ave, war!
And he was sick of the damned Mersey fog, and he was sick of the drunkenness of ScotlandRoad, and he was sick of the sleet lashing Hoylake links. He was sick of Pharisaical importers who did the heathen in the eye on Saturday and on Sunday in their blasted conventicles thumped their black-covered craws in respectable humility.... In Little Asia religion was a passion, not a smug hypocrisy; and though the heathen was dishonest, yet it was not the mathematical reasoned dishonesty of the Christian. It was a childish game, like horse-coping.... And in the East they did not blow gin in your face, smelling like turpentine....
And he was sick of the abominable homes, the horsehair furniture with the anti-macassars—Lord! and they called themselves clean.... He wanted the spotlessness of the Syrian courtyard.... The daubs on the British walls, sentimental St. Bernard dogs and dray-horses with calves' eyes, brought him to a laughing point when he thought of the subtlety of color and line in strange Persian rugs....
And he was sick of British women, with their knuckled hands, their splayed feet. Their abominable dressing, too, a bust and a brooch and a hooped skirt—their grocers' conventions, prudish, almost obscene, avoiding of the natural in word, deed, or thought.... He wanted Fenzile, withher eyes,vert de mer, her full childish face, her slim hands with the orange-tinted finger nails, her silken trousers, her little slippers of silver and blue.... Her soft arms, her back-thrown head, her closed lids.... And the fountain twinkling in the soft Syrian night, while afar off some Arab singer chanted a poem of Lyla Khanim's:
"Beni ser-mest u hayran eyleyen ol yar; janim dir.... The world is a prison and my heart is scarred.... My tears are like a vineyard's fountain, O absent one...."
And here was Beirut again: here the snowy crest of Lebanon, here the roadstead crowded with craft; here the mulberry groves. Here the sparkling sapphire sea; here the turf blazing with poppies; here the quiet pine road to Damascus; here the forests, excellent with cedars. Here the twisting unexpected streets. Here his own quiet house, with the courtyard and its fountain. Here the hum of the bazaars, here theha-haof the donkey boys, here the growling camels. Here the rugs on the wall; here the little orange-trees. Here the two negress servants, clean, efficient. Here color, and peace, and passion. Here Fenzile....
And this damned wrestler from Aleppo must go and spoil it all.
He might have shipped with one of the great American clippers racing around Cape Hope under rolling topsails, and become in his way as well known as Donald Mackay was, who built and mastered theSovereign of the Seas, with her crew of one hundred and five, four mates and two boatswains. He might have had a ship like Phil Dumaresq'sSurprise, that had a big eagle for her figurehead. He might have clipped the record of theFlying Cloud, three hundred and seventy-four miles in one day, steering northward and westward around Cape Horn. He might have had a ship as big as theGreat Republic, the biggest ship that ever took the seas. He might have had one of the East Indiamen, and the state of an admiral. He might have had one of the new adventurers in steel and steam.
But fame and glory never allured him, and destiny did not call him to be any man's servant. He was content to be his own master with his own ship, and do whatsoever seemed to him good and just to do. If they needed him and his boat anywhere, he would be there. When theyneeded boats to America, he was there. But if they didn't need him, he was not the one to thrust himself. Let destiny call.
Success, as it was called, was a thing of destiny. When destiny needed a man, destiny tapped him on the shoulder. Failure, however, was a man's own fault. There was always work to do. And it was up to every man to find his work. If there was no room for him in a higher work it was no excuse for his not working in a lower plane. There would be no failures, he thought, if folk were only wise. If a man came a cropper in a big way, it was because he had rushed into a work before Destiny, the invisible infallible nuncio of God, had chosen her man. Or because he was dissatisfied, ambition and ability not being equal. Or because he was lazy.
Always there was work to do, as there was work for him now. Clouds of sail and tubby steamboats went the crowded tracks of the world's waters, not to succor and help but for gain of money. And Lesser Asia was neglected, now that the channel of commerce to the States was opened wide. Syria needed more than sentimental travelers to the Holy Land. It needed machinery for its corn-fields and its mines. It needed prints and muslins from the Lancashire looms. It needed rice and sugar. And it hadmore to give than a religious education. Fine soap and fruit and wine and oil and sesame it gave, golden tobacco, and beautiful craftmanship in silver and gold, fine rugs from Persia. Brass and copper and ornamental woodcarving from Damascus, mother of cities; walnuts, wheat, barley, and apricots from its gardens and fields. Wool and cotton, gums and saffron from Aleppo, and fine silk embroidery.
Others might race past Java Head to China for tea and opium. Others might make easting around the Horn to the gold-fields of California. Others might sail up the Hooghly to Calicut, trafficking with mysterious Indian men. Others might cross to the hustle and welter of New York, young giant of cities, but Campbell was content to sail to Asia Minor. He brought them what they needed and they sent color and rime to prosaic Britain, hashish to the apothecaries, and pistachios from Aleppo, cambric from Nablus and linen from Bagdad, and occasionally for an antiquary a Damascene sword that rang like a silver bell.
For others the glory and fame to which destiny had called them. For others the money that they grubbed with blunted fingers from the dross-heaps of commerce. But forCampbell what work he could do, well done—and Lesser Asia ...
Of all the seas he had sailed it seemed to Shane that Mediterranean had more color, more life, more romance than any. Not the battles round the Horn, not the swinging runs to China, not the starry southern seas had for him the sense of adventure that Mediterranean had. Mediterranean was not a sea. It was a home haven, with traditions of the human house. Here Sennacherib sailed in the great galleys the brown Sidonian shipwrights had made for him. Here had been the Phenicians with their brailed squaresail. Here had been the men of Rhodes, sailors and fighters both. Here the Greek penteconters with their sails and rigging of purple and black. Here the Cypriotes had sailed under the lee of the islands Byron loved and where Sappho sang her songs like wine and honey, sharp wine and golden honey. Here had the Roman galleys splashed and here the great Venetian boats set proud sail against the Genoese. Here had the Lion-heart sailed gallantlyto Palestine. Here had Icarus fallen in the blue sea. Here had Paul been shipwrecked, sailing on a ship of Andramyttium bound to the coast of Asia, crossing the sea which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia, and trans-shipping at Myra. How modern it all sounded but for the strange antique names.
"And when we had sailed slowly many days"—only a seaman could feel the pathos of that—"and scarce were come over against Cnidus, the wind not suffering us, we sailed under Crete, over against Salmone;
"And, hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called The Fair Havens—"
Was Paul a sailor, too, Campbell often wondered? The bearded Hebrew, like a firebrand, possibly epileptic, not quite sane, had he at one time been brought up to the sea? "Sirs," he had said, "I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." There spoke a man who knew the sea—not a timid passenger. But the master of the ship thought otherwise and yet Paul was right. And then came "a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon." And that was the Levanter of to-day, Euraquilo, they call it—hell let loose. Then came furious seas, and the terrors of a lee shore; the frappingof the ship and the casting overboard of tackle, the jettisoning of freight—