The Measure of a Man | Page 2

name, and in the magical
radiance over land and sea had that momentary vision of a beloved face
which the second-sight of Memory sometimes grants to a pure,
unselfish love. Then with a joyful song nestling in his heart, he went
rapidly forward. And the night was as the day, for the moon was full
and the rosy spears of the Aurora were charging the zenith from every
point of the horizon.
Very early he came to a little town. It was asleep and there was no
sound of life in it; but a large yacht was lying at the silent pier with
steam visible, and he went directly to her. During the full tide she had
drifted a few feet from land, but he took the open space like a longer
step, walked straight to the wheel, and softly whistled.
Then the Captain came quickly up the companion-way, and there was
light and liking on his face, as he said,
"Welcome, sir! I was expecting thee."
"To be sure. I sent you word I should be here before sunrising. Are you
ready to sail?"
"Quite ready, sir."
"Then cast off at once," and immediately there was movement all
through the boat--the sound of setting sail, the lifting of the anchor, the
rush of steam, and the hoarse melancholy voices of the sailors. Then
the man laid his hand on the wheel, and with wind and tide in her favor,
the yacht was soon racing down the great North Sea.
"It is Yoden's time at the wheel, sir," said the Captain. "If so be he is
wanted."

"He is not wanted yet. I am going to take her as far as the Hoy--if it
suits you, Captain."
"Take your will, sir. I am always well suited with it."
Now John Hatton was a cotton-spinner, but he knew the ways of a boat,
and the winds and tides that would serve her, and the road southward
she must take; and at his will she went, as if she was a solan flying for
the rocks. When they first started, the sea-birds were dozing on their
perches, waiting for the dawn, and their unwonted silence lent a
stronger sense of loneliness to the gray, misty waters. But as they
approached the pillars of Hoy, the wind rose and the waves swelled
refulgent in the crimsoning east.
Then the man at the wheel was seen in all his great beauty--a man of
lofty stature perfectly formed and full of power and grace in every
movement. His head had an antique massiveness and was crowned with
bright brown hair thrown backward. His forehead was wide and
contemplative, his eyes large and gray and thickly fringed, lustrous but
not piercing. His loving and vehement soul was not always at their
windows, but when there, it drew or commanded all who met its gaze.
His nose was long and straight, showing great refinement, and his chin
unblunted by animal passions. A wonderful face, because the soul and
the mind always found their way at once and in full force to it, as well
as to the gestures, the speech, and every action of the body. And this
was the quality which gave to the whole man that air of distinction with
which Nature autographs her noblest work.
When they reached the Hoy he left the wheel and stood in wonder and
awe gazing at the sea around him. For some time it had been cloudy
and unquiet, but among these great basaltic pillars and into their black
measureless caves it flung itself with the rush and roar of a ten-knot
tide gone mad. Yet the thundering bellow of its waves was not able to
drown the aërial clamor of the millions of sea-birds that made these
lonely pillars and cliffs their home. Eagles screamed from their
summits. Great masses of marrots and guillemots rocked on the foam.
Kittiwakes of every kind in incalculable numbers and black and
brown-backed gulls by the thousands filled the air as thickly as

snowflakes in a winter's storm; while from shelves and pinnacles of the
cliffs, incredible numbers of gannots were diving with prodigious force
and straight as an arrow, after their prey--all plunging, rising,
screaming and shrieking, like some maddened human mob, the more
terrible because of the ear-piercing metallic ring of their unceasing
clamor.
After a long silence John Hatton turned to his Captain and said,
"Is it always like this, Captain?"
"It is often much livelier, sir. I have seen swarms of sea-birds miles
long, darkening the air with their wings. Our Great Father has many sea
children, sir. Next summer--God willing!--we might sail to the Faroe
Islands, and you would be among His whales, and His whale men."
"Then you have been to the Faroes?"
"More than once or