SEA-WRACK 27 



The great unlovely bow rose and reached for- 

 ward and settled until, as I lay face downward, 

 our speed seemed increased many fold. And I 

 wondered if the set wooden expression which 

 always marked the figurehead ladies and gods 

 had not its origin in the hypnotic joy of forever 

 watching the molten cobalt crash into alabaster, 

 this to emerald, then to merge again into the 

 blue which is a hue born of depth and space 

 and not of pigment. And now I forgot the 

 plunging bow beneath and the schools of toy 

 biplanes, the strange little grasshopper-like fish 

 which burst from the ultramarine, unstained, 

 f ull-fmned and banked sharply outward for their 

 brief span of flight. I looked up and saw pale- 

 green shallows, a thread of silver surf and the 

 rounded mountains of a tropical island. And I 

 frowned with impatience something that more 

 reliable figureheads never did for the island, 

 teeming with interest, with exciting birds, and 

 fascinating people, had been spoiled for me. 

 Force of circumstance had shuffled me inex- 

 tricably into a pack (I use the simile advisedly) 

 of insufferable tourists. Effeminate men, child- 

 ish women and spoiled children diluted or wholly 

 eclipsed every possible scene. The obvious 



