ON THE OCEAN WAVE 77 



death inflicts, dramatic loneliness, dry-eyed grief, forced 

 exertion, and the abandonment of brightening prospects. 



With pain and infinite labour he succeeded in 

 dragging and rolling the corpse to the beach. Thence 

 he pushed it up a plank on to the deck of the cutter, 

 and leaving his possessions to chance and fate, he, the 

 wearied and bereaved one-armed man, set sail in violent 

 weather across the open sea to the nearest port. At 

 midnig j ht the 'great cry' of a hurricane arose. 

 Lightning flashed over the stricken, yeasty sea. A lone- 

 some and grim quest this full of peril. Did not Nature 

 in the trumpet tones of a furious and vengeful spirit 

 decree the destruction of the little boat as she bounced 

 and floundered among" the crests of those awful waves? 

 Here was booty belonging to the ocean, prey escaping 

 from the talons of the fiercest and most remorseless of 

 harpies. So they shrieked and swarmed about the 

 boat, howling for what was theirs. The strife was 

 great, but not too great for the lonely man's seaman- 

 ship. All the fiends of the sea might do their worst, 

 but until the actual finale came he would sail the boat, 

 lifting her on the swell, eluding the white, hissing bulk 

 of the following sea. 



When at last the boat ran into port the sea had 

 gained a moral victory, but the man gave to the authori- 

 ties the mortal remains of his mate to be buried decently 

 on land . 



He told me that he felt cowed, he could never face 

 the sea again. Once before he had given up ' sailoring,' 

 not then on account of his nerves, but because ambition 

 to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins, and a few 

 bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He 

 had taken up a piece of land, but having no money, 





