THE COLLECTED POEMS

OF JOHN MASEFIELD

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SARD HARKER

A NOVEL

By

JOHN MASEFIELD

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.

First Published 1924

Printed in Great Britain by

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, ST. GILES’ WORKS, NORWICH

To

Isaline and Henry Philpot

SARD HARKER

PART ONE

Santa Barbara lies far to leeward, with a coast facing to the north and east. It is the richest of the sugar countries. Plantations cover all the lowland along its seven hundred miles of seaboard, then above the lowland is foothill, covered with forest, rising to the Sierras of the Three Kings, which make the country’s frontier.

The city of Santa Barbara lies at the angle of the coast in the bight of a bay. The Old Town covers the southern, the New Town the northern horn of the bay: in between are the docks and quays.

In the northern or New Town there is a plaza or square, called Of the Martyrdoms. Until about thirty years ago, there was a block of dwelling-houses on the western side of this square, which attracted the notice of visitors. Though the other buildings in the square were gay or smart, with flowers, colours and lights, these were always dingy, by decree. If any asked why they were dingy, they were told that those were the houses of the last sighs, “las casas de los sospiros ultimos,” and that they dated from the time of the Troubles under Don Lopez, who was Dictator de Santa Barbara from 1875 till 1887.

This Don Lopez de Meruel, called The Terrible, after nine years of murder and cruelty, began a year of madness by decreeing that he should be given divine honours in all the churches of the State. Finding himself opposed by some of the clergy and by many of the hidalgos, he seized the daughter of one of his richest landowners, Señorita Carlotta de Leyva de San Jacinto, then on a visit to the capital, and ordered her to pray to him while he sat throned in public on the high altar of the mission church. On her refusal, he ordered her to be enclosed in a house of common prostitutes.

The mistress of this house, an Englishwoman known as Aunt Jennings, refused to obey the order to receive her. “Miss Carlotta is a lady,” she said, “and she does not come in here. And none but a dirty dog would have thought of sending her. And as for praying to the dirty dog, Miss Carlotta has done quite right. If he wants folk to pray to him, let him come here, and my little Sunday school will give him all the pray he wants with a wet rag off the dresser.”

When this was reported to Don Lopez, he ordered that Carlotta and Aunt Jennings should be taken along the water-front by the hangman as far as the Plaza in the New Town, and that there their throats should be publicly cut against the walls of the houses on the west side, then used as houses of charity. This deed was at once done. The two women were killed by Don Lopez’ son, Don José, then a lad of twenty, assisted by a negro (Jorge) and two half-breeds (Zarzas and Don Livio).

Don Manuel San Substantio Encinitas, the betrothed lover of Carlotta, was then at his estate of Las Mancinillas, two hundred miles away. When the news of the crime was brought to him, he gathered his friends, sympathisers, and estate servants, some seven hundred in all, and marched to unseat Don Lopez and avenge the murder.

His army was routed by Don Lopez in a green savannah near the city; many of his friends, not killed in the fighting, were hunted down and killed; he himself, with about forty horsemen, rode from the battlefield, then swerved and made a dash for the city. They appeared at the Old Town at sunset and summoned the fortress to surrender.

Don Livio, who commanded in the fortress, recognised Don Manuel and determined to outwit him. While parleying at the gate as though for terms, he sent a lad, one Pablo de Chaco-Chaco, to some Republican troops quartered outside the fortress in a sugar warehouse. These troops, being warned by Pablo, took up their positions in windows commanding Don Manuel’s troop and suddenly fired in among them. In the skirmish which followed, Don Manuel’s men fell back along the water-front, and were shot down as they went. As darkness closed in, the last six of them, including Don Manuel, gathered at what is known in the ballads as the Bajel Verde, a green boat or lighter drawn up on the beach. Here they made a stand till their ammunition failed. They then took to the water, swimming, in the hope of reaching some English ship in the harbour. But by this time Don Livio had sent out soldiers in boats to patrol the water-front. All of the six except Don Manuel, were shot or clubbed, as they swam, by these patrols. Don Manuel, through fortune, and because he took to the water some minutes after the others, managed to reach the English barque Venturer, whose captain (Cary) took him aboard, and brought him a few days later to safety in Port Matoche.

Eighteen months later, having laid his plans with care, Don Manuel sailed from Calinche with another company, in a tramp steamer. He landed unexpectedly at Santa Barbara, shot Don Lopez with his own hand and made himself Dictator.

In spite of frequent risings of the Lopez faction, most of them led or inspired by Don José, who had escaped Don Manuel’s justice, the rule of the New Dictator was the most fruitful of modern times.

Lopez had caused a rhyme to be carven over the door of the cathedral of Santa Barbara. In translation it runs:

Lopez found me brick

And left me stone.

When the new cathedral was built upon the site of the old, men remembered this rhyme, and pled that it should be recarven:

Lopez found me brick and left me stone,

Manuel made me like an angel’s throne.

For indeed Don Manuel, in his rebuilding of the city, made the cathedral the marvel of the New World. That and the chapel of Carlotta at his palace, were the chief of his works in his own mind; but in truth he made Santa Barbara as eminent for the arts and sciences as for religion. He founded, built and endowed four big universities, three opera-houses, nineteen theatres. He discovered, encouraged, helped, and at last employed through the years of their power, all the architects, sculptors, painters, musicians and poets who have made Santa Barbara the glory of Spanish-speaking America.

In his person Don Manuel was as glorious as his mind. He has been described in a sonnet:

A calm like Jove’s beneath a fiery air.

His hands most beautiful and full of force,

Able to kill the wolf and tame the horse

Or carve the granite into angels’ hair.

His brow most noble over eyes that burn

At thought of truth or knowledge wanting aid.

His mind a very sword to make afraid,

A very fire to beacon at the turn.

His step swift as a panther’s, his will fierce

To be about the beauty of some deed,

Since beauty’s being is his spirit’s food.

His voice caressing where it does not pierce;

His wrath like lightning: he is King: indeed

He is much more, a King with gratitude.

* * * * *

Chisholm Harker, rector of Windlesham, in Berkshire, wrote a pamphlet on English Mediæval Mystical Romances, and died young, leaving a widow and one son, Chisholm, the “Sard” Harker of these pages, who was thirteen at his father’s death.

Mrs. Harker married again two years later. Sard, at his own request, went to sea, sailing first in the barque Venturer, Captain Cary, mentioned a page or two back. He was on his first voyage in her when Don Manuel took refuge in her. She was one of Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s sugar-clippers, then regularly trading to the ports of Santa Barbara. Later in his time Sard followed Captain Cary into the Pathfinder and remained with him in her as third, second and at last as chief mate. He was mate of the Pathfinder and had been for ten years at sea when this tale begins. He was called “Sard” Harker (though seldom to his face) because he was judged to be sardonic. He, too, has been described in a sonnet:

A lean man, silent, behind triple bars

Of pride, fastidiousness and secret life.

His thought an austere commune with the stars,

His speech a probing with a surgeon’s knife.

His style a chastity whose acid burns

All slack false formlessness in man or thing;

His face a record of the truth man learns

Fighting bare-knuckled Nature in the ring.

His self (unseen until a danger breaks)

Serves as a man, but when the peril comes

And weak souls turn to water, his awakes

Like bright salvation among martyrdoms.

Then, with the danger mastered, once again

He goes behind his doors and draws the chain.

Captain Cary, who had made the Pathfinder a famous ship, thought him the best officer he had ever had.

The Pathfinder was the last and finest of Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s sugar clippers. She made some famous passages in the sugar and wool trades before she went the way of her kind. She has been mentioned in several sonnets:

She lies at grace, at anchor, head to tide,

The wind blows by in vain: she lets it be.

Gurgles of water run along her side,

She does not heed them: they are not the sea.

She is at peace from all her wandering now,

Quiet is in the very bones of her;

The glad thrust of the leaning of her bow

Blows bubbles from the ebb but does not stir.

Rust stains her side, her sails are furled, the smoke

Streams from her galley funnel and is gone;

A gull is settled on her skysail truck.

Some dingy seamen, by her deckhouse, joke;

The river loiters by her with its muck,

And takes her image as a benison.

* * * * *

How shall a man describe this resting ship,

Her heavenly power of lying down at grace,

This quiet bird by whom the bubbles slip,

This iron home where prisoned seamen pace?

Three slenderest pinnacles, three sloping spires,

Climbing the sky, supported but by strings

Which whine in the sea wind from all their wires,

Yet stand the strain however hard it dings.

Then, underneath, the long lean fiery sweep

Of a proud hull exulting in her sheer,

That rushes like a diver to the leap,

And is all beauty without spot or peer.

Built on the Clyde, by men, of strips of steel

That once was ore trod by the asses’ heel.

A Clyde-built ship of fifteen hundred tons,

Black-sided, with a tier of painted ports,

Red lead just showing where the water runs.

Her bow a leaping grace where beauty sports.

Keen as a hawk above the water line

Though full below it: an elliptic stern:

Her attitude a racer’s, stripped and fine,

Tense to be rushing under spires that yearn.

She crosses a main skysail: her jibboom

Is one steel spike: her mainsail has a spread

Of eighty-seven feet, earring to earring.

Her wind is a fresh gale, her joy careering

Some two points free before it, nought ahead

But sea, and the gale roaring, and blown spume.

* * * * *

Las Palomas, where this story begins, is far away to windward on the sea-coast of the Tierra Firme. It has grown to be an important city since the northern railway was completed. It has been a frequented port since the days of the Conquistadores, because it is a safe harbour in all winds save the north, with good holding ground and an abundance of pure water for the filling. In the years 1879-80 it had an evil name, for it was then the nearest seaport to the newly discovered goldfields at Entre las Montanas in the province of Palo Seco, three hundred miles inland. Many diggers returning with gold from the fields were knocked on the head at Las Palomas.

Las Palomas means the Doves. It got its name from the blue rock-pigeons which used to haunt the cliffs just south of the old (or Spanish) town. The cliffs are now covered with buildings and the pigeons are gone. The only doves thereabouts now are the Little Doves of Santa Clara in a Convent school so named.

Las Palomas was formerly mainly a coffee and sugar port, but of late years it has become a great place for the exportation of copper-ore from the mines at Tloatlucan, only seven miles inland.

Nearly thirty years ago, when this story begins, there was open savannah to the north and north-west of Las Palomas city. In those days you could walk (in that direction) in less than an hour from the heart of the city into primeval forest. If you walked due north along the beach, from Jib and Foresail Quay on the water-front, you could reach a part of the forest in two miles. This was a clump of pines which came right down to the sea on a tongue of red earth.

If, in those days, you walked through those pines, still northward over the tongue, you came to a little beach, edged with a low bank of shrubbery. There, between the forest and the sea, was the mansion known as Los Xicales, where old General Martinez, the last descendant of one who came there with Cortés, lived to his end in faith, poverty and style.

Los Xicales.—Nobody knew at a first hearing what the xicales were. They were not jicales nor jicaras, as many thought, but trumpet-shaped flowers, with blue and white stripes, which General Martinez had brought there from the Indian territory. They were neither convolvuluses, petunias, nor hermositas, though like all three. They were just “xicales,” which is as near as the Spaniards could come to the Indian name for them, which means, simply, “flowers.” The house might have been called “the flowers” without loss of time.

* * * * *

On the evening of the 18th March, 1887, just ten years before my story begins, Sard Harker, then on his first voyage to sea, lay in the barque Venturer, in Las Palomas harbour, expecting to sail at daybreak for Santa Barbara, “to complete with sugar for home.”

During the day, while bending sails aloft, he had seen the white walls of Los Xicales and had been struck by their likeness to a house in England, near the sea, where he had stayed as a child. He had taken a good look at the place, while waiting for the sail to come up to him, with the thought that it was either a coastguard station or a lighthouse. After that, work occupied him until dusk, so that he put the house out of his mind.

For some weeks he had been training himself to be “a hard case,” that is, able to stand exposure, by sleeping on the top of the deckhouse, between the mizen staysail and one of the boats. Here, with one blanket between himself and the deck, one blanket over him, and a coil of boat’s falls for a pillow, he went to bed that night as usual, thinking the thoughts which meant much to him. These thoughts were not about the house, but about a girl, whose idea filled his inner life intensely.

He had thought his thoughts of this girl, as he always did, when putting the day from him, and had then turned over, to sleep as usual. He saw the stars overhead, through a maze of the main-rigging: he heard the water go crooning and gurgling by, and a man in the deckhouse beneath him knock out his pipe; then instantly he was asleep, in a sea-sleep, a depth of sleep, a million miles from this world.

Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with that mansion by the sea lit up in his brain and words ringing like prophecy in his ears:

“You will meet her again in that house, for the second of the three times. It will be very, very important, so be ready.”

He had risen up in the cold and dew of before dawn to stare towards the house, almost expecting to see it lit with angels; but it lay among its trees, barely visible. The dew was dripping, the water crooning and the watchman humming a song between his teeth. The cook was up making coffee, for there was a light in the galley; everything was as usual, except himself.

He was so shaken with excitement that he gripped the mizen stay to keep himself from leaping overboard to swim to that lone beach. Then caution had come back upon him, with the thought, “It will not be to-day; we are sailing to-day; ‘it will be,’ the message said, not ‘it is’; I am to stand by; it is all for the future, not for now.”

At that moment the order came to call all hands; and by daylight the Venturer was standing out from the northern channel, while Sard cast loose the gaskets and shouted “All gone the main-royal” to those on deck. For more than nine years he saw no more of Las Palomas, but the memory of his dream remained intense. The “first” of the “three times” was the deepest thing in his life: it made him shake, even to think of it: the hope of the second time kept him alive.

Then in February, 1897, he came again to Las Palomas, this time as mate in the Pathfinder. Again he looked out on Los Xicales, this time through a strong telescope from the main top-gallant cross-trees. He saw the house unchanged in all those years, save that it looked more battered. When he could he went ashore, and walked northward along the beach, over the tongue of red earth with the pine trees, to the house itself.

He found no barrier to his entrance to the grounds on that side, save the close-growing thorny mita shrubs which covered the low bank above the beach. Beyond the bank, they had spread beach-shingle as a drive; the house rose up out of the shingle white and withered against the blackness of pines and the gloom of Spanish moss. It was a pleasant, Southern mansion, less than twenty years old, the worse for wear. It had a look of having come down in the world, or rather, that staring look of having come past its best, which houses share with men and flowers:

“This neither is its courage nor its choice

But its necessity, in being old.”

It had a look of having no heir, and of being the last of the family. It had not been painted since its builders left it nineteen years before.

It was shuttered up tight, throughout; no smoke rose from it; plainly everybody was away. He noticed big leaden urns near the blistered green verandah. They were filled with a sprawling trailer about to blossom. He thought, “These are probably rare flowers, brought here when the house was new, when the owner thought that he would be a success.”

He stared at the house, thinking that there he was at last, after all those years, there at the house of his dream, where he was to meet her for the second time.

And now, on the excitement of being there, after all those years, after his mind had gone alone so often to where he stood, came the disappointment, of finding the house shut up, with no one there. He had half-expected and wholly hoped to have found her outside the house, looking for his coming. Hope and expectation were dashed. The house was empty.

Feeling that he was trespassing, he walked to the western side of the house, climbed the stone steps and rang the bell, which gave forth a jangle far away to his left. No one answered the bell, though he rang a second time. Little scraps of plaster were scaling off the wall by the bell-pull; the forest behind the house needed cutting back: it was coming too close with its evil and its darkness. The noise of its sighing was like the whispering of heirs about a death-bed.

“I am not to meet her here this time,” he said to himself; “but since she may live here or have been here, I will go all round it, so that I may know what she has known.”

He found that it ran, roughly, north and south, parallel with the beach. It had an old green verandah on the sides looking on the sea; the stone perron and steps on the west, and out-houses, on which the jungle was encroaching, to the north. On the north side was a path, which seemed to be still in use: it led through an iron gate, which was open, as though to invite him on. He passed through it, into a jungle of evergreens, in which he heard the noise of water. In a few minutes he came out on to a causeway of stone which led over swampy ground to a pier or quay, on the bank of a river which curved out into the sea there. The pavement continued inland upstream along the bank of the river till the forest hid it from sight.

As all water interests a sailor, Sard stopped on the bank to watch this river. It came round a curve out of the forest, broadened suddenly to a width of thirty yards, and went babbling in a shallow over the sands into the sea. It was like listening to poetry to hear it.

“They had this place a harbour once,” Sard thought, “and boats loaded produce here. Then, in some flood, the other side of the harbour was washed away: there is a bit of a pier of masonry still standing: and they were never able to afford to repair it. This river makes the northern boundary of the estate, I suppose.”

He stayed, watching the water so intently that he never saw the approach of a woman, coming from the forest along the path by the riverside. He looked up suddenly and found a tall old proud-looking negress within a few feet of him. She was dressed in black, she wore a mantilla over her shoulders, and a big straw Gainsborough hat upon her head. She wore very heavy old silver earrings in her ears, which were small. Her nose was small; her face was sharply and cleanly cut; she walked like an empress; she had race in every line of her. She carried a small basket, which Sard judged to contain eggs or meat. She seemed at once both to resent and to ignore Sard’s presence there. Sard saluted her, and asked her whether he could reach a road to Las Palomas by continuing along the river.

“Yes,” she said. “But if you will come with me by the house, it will be a shorter way.”

She led Sard back along his path; presently they were in sight of the house.

“Madam,” Sard said, “who lives in this house?”

“It is closed at present. I live here with my husband. I am Tia Eusebia, the caretaker.”

“Whose house is it?”

“It is the house of General Martinez, who is away in the South.”

“It has been a beautiful house. Is General Martinez married? Has he children?”

“God has willed that the General should be alone.”

“When will he return?”

“Who knows?”

By this time they were at the northern end of the house where there was a small door. Tia Eusebia brought out her door-key.

“See,” she said, “since you want the road to Las Palomas, continue past the house; turn to the right near the front door, up the drive to the lodge. The gates are locked, but you can pass. If you then turn to the left, you will be upon the road to the North Gate of Las Palomas, which is distant, by the savannah, a league; but, by the seashore, less.”

“Thank you indeed, Madam, for your guidance,” Sard said. “And now will you tell me yet one thing more? Do you know of one, Señorita de la Torre, who has been to this house, or is now here or to come here?”

“De la Torre?”

“Yes. Señorita Juanita de la Torre.”

“God has neither brought nor promised such,” she said. “It is thought that some English may come here, but of no such name.”

“This lady is not English, but Spanish.”

“If she be young and beautiful, she will not come here, Señor, where youth died long ago and beauty withered. This is the house of the xicale flowers, brought from the Indian country by the General, for his love, who died before she saw them, and for his son, who died before they flowered.”

“They flower for others, Señora,” Sard said.

“Others do not taste with my tongue,” she said. “But since God favours others, it is enough. Vaya con Dios, Señor.”

“Adios, Señora.”

He went, as she had told him, up the drive to the lodge, which was ruinous but inhabited, since a negro child was crying in it. The gates were locked, as she had said, but he could pass by a gap in the fence into the road. The fence was mainly gap: it might have been said that the gaps had fence in them. The forest shut in the road, which went on the right hand (as he judged) to a bridge over the river, and on the left hand to the savannah and Las Palomas. Sard walked back to Las Palomas and went on board his ship to his cabin.

Sitting there, on his red velvet settle, he wondered what it all meant. On an unforgettable day fourteen years before, when he was a boy, he had met a girl, who had changed his life for him. He had met her by a succession of chances and had never seen her since. Four years later, he had been told in a dream, such as no one could neglect, that he would meet the girl again at Los Xicales.

After the dream, life had kept him away from following his fancy: he had had to serve his time and make his way. Five years after the dream, he had been free for a while: he had gone to Spain to look for the girl, but had found no trace of her.

“And now that I come to Los Xicales,” he said, “I find the house shut up and her name not known. Whenever I hope to make this more than a dream, it goes to nothing.”

He looked from his ports upon the deck of the ship. He told himself that he was a grown man who ought not to let himself be swayed by a dream. “As for the girl,” he told himself, “she is dead or has forgotten, or is where I shall never see her.”

“I will put her right out of my mind,” he said. He tried to interest himself in a book, but found it impossible. “I cannot put her out of my mind,” he said. “She is all twined into it and part of it. And the dream tells truth. Probably she is at Los Xicales now and needs my help.”

As this thought was unbearable, he went ashore again to make sure. “She will be there this time,” he told himself. “Beyond all doubt she will be there this time.” Presently he was at the lodge gates, making sure.

At the lodge, a negro child was still crying. A very tall, lean, pale negro was sitting on the edge of the lodge’s verandah-stoop, plaiting a withy-basket. Sard hailed him.

“Has a Spanish lady come to this house to-day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she at the house now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is her name, do you know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is her name?”

“What is her name?”

“Yes,” Sard said, “what is her name?”

“What name?”

“The name she is called by: her surname.”

“Whose name?”

“The lady’s name.”

“Which name? There’s so many names.”

“The name of the Spanish lady who came to this house to-day.”

“Oh,” the man said, “the name of the lady who came to this house to-day?”

“Yes, that is what I want to know; what is her name?”

“Yes, sir,” the negro said; “now I know what you want. I didn’t know for the first moment what you asked me about, but now I know. Oh, yes, sir. Look, sir, I’m making a basket:

Put the withy there,

Cross the withy there,

Jesus in the air . . .

Sir, forgive my asking, but have you a little bit of tobacco or a god-dam cigarette?”

“No,” Sard said, “I have not.”

“What do you want here, sir?” the man asked. “What do you come to this house for? This is General Martinez’ house.”

“So I understand,” Sard said. “I want to know the name of the lady who came to this house to-day.”

“Oh, Lord, are you American?”

“No.”

“I thought you were an American, because you talked such funny language.”

“What is the name of the lady?”

“There is no lady here, sir; the lady died a hundred years ago. Oh, say, the lovely yellow candles, and the priest he go Do diddy diddy oh do.”

“Then there is no lady?”

“All put into the grave: ring a bell: Do.”

“Is anyone at the house at all?”

“All in the grave. Do. Ring the bell. Do.”

A square-faced man, riding sideways on a heavily-laden mule, stopped in the road.

“Sir,” he said to Sard, “can I be of service to you?”

“Yes, sir,” Sard said. “Can you tell me if any Spanish lady came, or is coming, to this house to-day?”

“The house is shut up, sir. No one will come to this house for some weeks. I, who am Paco, know this, since I have this day talked with Ramón, the caretaker of the General. It may be that in some weeks’ time, when the English, who are to be here, have come, Tio Ramón may know more.”

Sard thanked him and walked on; he came to a little bridge over the river, crossed it, and continued through the forest for half a mile, when he came to a cleared patch where a forge stood beside the road with an inn (of sorts) alongside it. Here a grey old Italian, who said that his name was Enobbio, confirmed what Paco had said: the house of Los Xicales was shut up, in the care of Tio Ramón and his wife Eusebia: no visitor would come there for some weeks.

Sard thanked him and returned to his ship.

“There it is,” he said, when he stood once more in his cabin. “This thing has no foundation in fact, but it has the power to make me do stupid things. I will not go ashore again, unless I have some certain tidings to take me there. This love has led me elsewhere in the past: it must not lead to folly now.”

His room was light enough to show how little his love had led him to folly in the past. He was a tall lean muscular man in hard condition, sunburnt to the colour of a Red Indian. His hair was black, very fine and worn a little long (to shore eyes). He was clean-shaven and his face was a clear brown with blood in it. Wind and sun puckers made his look hawklike. His hands were big and fine. He was always choicely and subtly well-dressed. Everything about him was fastidious, to the point of keeping people aloof and afraid.

His room contained many books, for he was deeply read in his profession and in the sciences allied to it. He spoke the four languages which he reckoned to be necessary in his profession. French, German and Norwegian he had learned from intelligent shipmates as a lad: Spanish he had learned more thoroughly, since it was “her” native tongue. He had read not widely but choicely in all these tongues. In English he cared deeply for only one literary period, from the coming of Dryden to the death of Doctor Johnson. A flute and the music of that time amused his odd moments. He had taught himself to make accurate drawings of things which interested him. His sketch books contained much that would be valuable now to historians of that old way of life:

“The forepeak of the Venturer at 3 a.m., March 3rd, 1889, after collision with the Tuggranong.”

“The main top-gallant parral goes.”

“The following sea. June 16th, 1891,” etc., etc.

On the bulkheads of his room were standard and aneroid barometers given to him by the Meteorological Society, with other instruments, for the excellence of his meteorological records.

He looked round these things, with the thought that they were not life, but the solace of loneliness. He felt as lonely as a captain. “I’ll go no more ashore,” he thought, “I’ll spend my time teaching the boys Spanish. Huskisson has a gift for languages: he ought not to be at sea.”

He did not go ashore again, but thought, day after day, that before he sailed he would perhaps go. As the time passed, the thought that he was a fool to be swayed thus by dreams kept him on board. In five more weeks the Pathfinder got her hatches on, although light, ready to drop down to leeward to Santa Barbara to complete with sugar for home. It was the evening of the 18th March, 1897: the tug was to be alongside early the next morning, to tow her clear of the Rip-Raps.

“It will be just ten years to a day,” Sard said, “at five to-morrow morning, since that dream was a fire in my soul; but all the same, I will not go ashore; this inner life of mine shall fool me no longer.”

He passed the evening making his room all ready for sea-fight, for the Pathfinder was a lively ship when not loaded down to her marks. When all was stowed and chocked, he took his flute and played some of the airs printed in D’Urfey’s “Pills to Purge Melancholy.” He was not more than a competent player, but the night and the water gave a magic to his fluting. The men came aft as far as the waist and hung in a body there,

“Listening to that sweet piping.”

At about ten o’clock, knowing that he was to be on deck at daybreak, he turned in. He heard Captain Cary, in the chart-house on deck, call the steward for his nightcap; he heard the steward go, and the spoon chink in the glass. Then the watchman went shuffling forward from the main hatch, tapping out his pipe. The sea gurgled down the side, then life was shut off as by the turning of a tap, he was asleep in a sea-sleep, dead to the world.

Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with the knowledge that a gigantic cock of fire was bursting out of clouds and crowing:

“To-day, to-day, to-day, for the second of the three times, O be ready, O be ready, O be ready; at the house of the xicale flowers; to-day, to-day, to-day.”

Instantly the crowing of the cock and the image of the house were merged in the memory of the first time, so that all was burning with the idea of her. He leaped up, for all these things were real, in his room, there, as it seemed, to be touched and caught. He saw them slowly fade from him, die away, not as it seemed, into his brain, but out of his three forward ports into the greyness of morning. He followed them till his brow was pressed on the brass rim of one of the ports. There was nothing beyond but the deck, the hatch, the bulk of the mainmast made darker by the mizen staysail, and the noise of the dropping of dew.

“To-day,” he said, “to-day. Why, we sail to-day. We shall be gone in two hours, far out of this, and God knows if I shall ever be here again.

“Very well, then. I will go ashore. I will leave ship and sea, so as not to fail her.

“I cannot do that,” he added, “I am tied, both to Captain Cary and to the ship. I shall sail at daybreak. I must get on deck.”

It was but a step from his cabin door to the deck. He stood beneath the break of the poop, looking out upon the dimness; he heard the cocks crowing ashore.

“I’ll put these dreams in their place,” he said to himself. “But when they come, they are shaking experiences. As long as I know that they mean nothing, I can steer a compass course.”

He brought a towel to the waist, stripped and called the watchman to pour some buckets of salt water over him. As he dressed in his cabin afterwards, the steward brought him some coffee; he carried it out on deck, and heard the cocks crowing far inland in clearings of the forest. “It is a marvellous noise,” he muttered; “they shout for the sun before there is a glimmer, and the sun comes. To-day, to-day, to-day.”

The deck was wet with dew, which was dripping from the eaves of the deckhouses. The port was not yet awake, though lights were burning. The ship was awake: there was a light at the galley door; the boatswain was standing there, yarning with the cook; and from time to time a drowsy man shambled into the light from forward to fetch coffee or to ask a light.

Sard put his cup between two pins and stared at the line of the coast to the north of the town, some two or three miles from him. There, in the dimness of the dawn, the white of Los Xicales just showed against the blackness of the forest. He looked at it intently. It was one small patch of paleness, becoming clearer from minute to minute.

“That is it,” he said to himself. “I’ve thought of it every day for ten years, and stared at it ever since we moored, and been to it twice; and now that I am sailing I am warned again that I am to meet her there again. I am warned just as I was warned ten years ago, on this very day of the year, at this very time of the day, in this very berth of Las Palomas, just as I was sailing as I am to-day, for Santa Barbara, on that cruise when we saved Don Manuel. The second of the three times is to be to-day and I am to be ready.”

Looking over the water at the house, the emotion which had woken him surged back upon him, so that he had to grip the pins.

“It is all madness,” he said. “A man must go by intellect and will. These dreams fight against both. Life has settled the matter: I am not to meet her. My task here is to sail this ship wherever the old man bids me. Now I will do my task.”

He walked forward to the port half deck door where the boys stood waiting for a call.

“On deck; turn-to here. Get the colours up, ready for bending, two of you,” he said. “Huskisson, get the Blue Peter.” As they came trooping out behind him, he turned to the boatswain, who was hanging about in the waist waiting for the word.

“Rig the head-pump,” he said.

“Rig the head-pump, sir,” the boatswain said. “Head-pump there, two of you. Beg pardon, sir, shall we be heaving in, after washing down?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Dorney, the third mate, drove some of the boys forward with an accent from the northern midlands. “Now, choom Jellybags,” he said, “get tha boockets; and Nibs and Woolfram get tha scroobers. We want a good harbour scroob for sailing.”

Mr. Dorney was a rougher customer than the other mates, but a faultless practical seaman. He would have made a perfect boatswain. Anything to be done with hands (especially a dangerous thing) was Mr. Dorney’s delight. He had a heavy, loutish, expressionless face, which seemed to have been badly carved out of pale wood. He had only scraped through his navigation examinations after three attempts. “Ah haate all this fooss of sights,” he said. “Ah can foodge a day’s work.” In any emergency he was as swift as Sard himself, but his excellence stopped at seamanship: he was a coastwise seaman who had strayed into blue water.

In a minute or two Sard was forward with his watch, setting the pace in washing decks against the second mate. He had rolled up his trousers to the knee and worked barefooted in advance of the scrubbers, scattering sand for them to scrub with, then snatching buckets from the water-carriers to sluice the portion scrubbed. By the time his watch had worked aft to the main hatch, he was five yards ahead of the second mate. There came a hail from a water-boat going past them to the outer anchorage.

“Pathfinders ahoy!”

Sard went to the rail to take the hail. The water-boat was going dead slow, as though only half awake. She still carried her navigation lights, but men were taking them in and blowing them out as she paused to speak.

“Pathfinder ahoy!”

“Hullo, the water-boat.”

“Your tug won’t be alongside till six this evening.”

“At six this evening! Why not this morning?”

“She’s blown some of her god-dam guts out.”

“Where is she?”

“Having her guts done at Ytá-Ytá.”

“Right.”

“Will you tell Captain Cary?”

“Right, Mister.”

“The Otoque will be in. You’ll get your mail before you sail. So long, Mister.”

“So long, Mister.”

Sard slipped on shoes, unrolled his trousers and went to report to Captain Cary, who was sitting bolt upright in a chair in his chart-room, being shaved by his steward.

“The tug has broken down, sir. She can’t be alongside till six this evening.”

“Who said this?”

“The skipper of the water-boat, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harker. Mr. Harker.”

“Sir.”

“I shall wait for her. I won’t try the Rip-Raps without a tug. Carry on with your brass work and bright work. Stay one moment, I’ve got something to say to you, Mr. Harker. I believe you used to be fond of boxing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The agents gave me some tickets the other night, for a sort of an assault-at-arms this afternoon. Since we are not to sail, perhaps you would like to take them, and go, after dinner this afternoon. Would you like to go?”

“Thank you, sir. Yes; very much.”

“Then oblige me by taking the tickets. Steward, find the tickets for Mr. Harker.”

“Where are they, Captain Cary?”

“I told you to find them.”

“Very good, Captain Cary.”

They were in the pocket of the Captain’s go-ashore coat. They were handed over to Sard.

“You can take your own time, of course, Mr. Harker,” the captain said. “Let me see, you never got ashore here in the Venturer?”

“No, sir.”

“And I think you were only ashore once this time since the anchors were down. You ought to see the place; not that there’s anything to see: so stay out of the ship if you wish, till the tug’s alongside. I have always gone by the maxim, Mr. Harker, that one ought to see everything that one has the chance of seeing; because in life not many have one chance and none has two.”

“Thank you, Captain Cary. Are we to heave in, sir?”

“Not till this afternoon, Mr. Harker.”

“Thank you, Captain Cary.”

Sard returned to the deck to finish the washing down. He had the running rigging thrown from the pins and recoiled: he had the men to the brasswork; saw the colours up and the house flag and Blue Peter hoisted. Captain Cary was on deck by a quarter to eight with an eye like a hawk for a spot or a started rope yarn. Sard at that moment was at the windlass with the carpenter. Coming out, he cast a glance aft and a glance aloft, with the thought that for all that magnificent thing, the ship, he was the man responsible, and that she would stand even Captain Cary’s eye. “She is in good order,” he thought, “she can stand anything that the sea can send. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

She was indeed beautiful, even from forward, looking aft. The power of her sheer made a sailor catch his breath. She was not very lofty, but her yards were very square: her spread was huge. She was in lovely order; yards squared, harbour-stowed, all the chafing gear bran-new, and the decks already sea-shape. He sent a boy aloft to dip a rope clear, and then went aft, with an eye for everything and the knowledge that the ship was fit.

As he went aft, he stopped just abaft the fo’c’sle (the forward deckhouse) to have another look at her. He never realised how much he liked his work until just before it was tested. He looked up at her great steel masts with the enormous yards (the fore and main yards together, end for end, as long as three cricket pitches) with the thought that this was art, this iron shell, with her gear, and that he was the master of this art. “It’s a good framework,” he thought, “a good foundation. Building a steeple is only going a little further in the same direction, and building a steeple is the finest thing a man can do. But a steeple is based on rock and this thing flies along water. This thing works for her living.”

He stopped abreast of the main-rigging to have a word with “Pompey” Hopkins, the second mate, a fair-haired, snub-nosed man of twenty-three, whose sea career he had watched from its beginning. He was called “Pompey” because he came from Portsmouth.

“Any chance of a Liverpool leave, Mr. Harker, since we are not to sail?”

“None, Mister,” Sard said; “you know the old man by this time, don’t you?”

“What shall we be doing, then?”

“After breakfast he will have a look-see and decide to trim her by the head.”

“I used to think sugar was a food,” Pompey said, “but now I know that it’s a poison.”