The Beach of Dreams | Page 3

in her night attire shouting to me
to put the helm down--under hare sticks in the docks, mind you!"
"Dreams are crazy things," said Mason. "I don't believe there's anything
in them."
"Well, maybe not," said Pound. He glanced at the binnacle card and
then went below.
Nothing is more impressive to the unaccustomed mind than the spars
and canvas of a ship under full sail seen from the deck, nothing more
suggestive of power and the daring of man than the sight of those
leviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main and
foresail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil point writing
on the sky. Nothing more arresting than the power of the steersman. A
turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all that canvas
shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water is spilled from
a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might lose the ship a
mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed, automatically,
almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, who ashore was
hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was all wisdom,
direction and intuition.
The wake of the Albatross lay as if drawn with a ruler.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward;
pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some of
the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown upon
by the spill of the wind from the head sails.
An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor.
"We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did

know it. Put in there in a sealer out of New Bedford in '82. I wasn't
more'n a boy then. The Yanks used to use that place a lot in those days.
The blackest blastedest hole I ever struck. Christmas Island was where
we lay mostly, for two months, the chaps huntin' the wal'uses and killin'
more than they could carry. The blastedest hole I ever struck."
"I was there in a Dane once," began another of the crew. "It was time of
year the sea cows was matin' and you could hear the roarin' of them ten
mile off."
"Dane," said Ponting, "what made you ship a'board a Dane--I've heard
tell of Danes. Knew a chap signed on in one of them Leith boots out of
Copenhagen runnin' north, one of them old North Sea cattle trucks
turned into a passenger tramp, passengers and ponies with a hundred
ton of hay stowed forward and the passengers lyin' on their backs on it
smokin' their pipes, and the bridge crawled over with passengers, girls
and children, and the chap at the wheel havin' to push 'em out of the
way, kept hittin' reefs all the run from Leith to God knows where, and
the Old Man playin' the fiddle most of the time."
"That chap said the Danes was a d----d lot too sociable for him."
Raft listened without entirely comprehending. He had always been a
fore-mast hand. He knew practically nothing of steam and he would
just as soon have fancied himself a railway porter as a hand on a
passenger ship. He was one of the old school of merchant seamen and
the idea of a cargo of girls and children and general passengers, not to
speak of ponies, was beyond him.
The girls he had mostly known were of the wharf-side. He finished his
pipe and went down below--and turned in.
He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands on
deck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of sea
in his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shifted
and a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship. More was
coming and through the sheeting rain and spindrift the voice of the
Bo'sw'n was roaring to let go the fore top-gallant halyards.

Next moment Raft was in the rigging followed by others. The sail had
to be stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain to
drown him, but he went on clinging to the top-gallant mast-stays and
looking down he could see the faces of the others following him, faces
sheeted over with rain and working blindly upwards.
Ponting was the man immediately below him, and taking breath for a
moment and against the wind, Ponting was now yelling out that they
had their work cut out for them.
They had.
The top-gallant sail had taken charge of itself, and Raft and Ponting as
they lay out on the yard seemed battling with a thing alive, intelligent,
and desperately wicked.
The sail snored and trembled and