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Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

their boredom. The young man denounced his wayward friends and the old man sympathised with him. The young man told of his ambitions and they were praised. And soon the old man was speaking and his once-dissatisfied acquaintance listened enthralled.

For he spoke of the days when he was young, captain of his ship at 25. Of placid blue waters and angry, foaming seas; of quaint ports, with dusky dancers whose costumes seemed almost entirely composed of bracelets; where strange brown men gabbled their foreign languages amongst the bazpars; of the lazy swell of the waves, lapping against becalmed boats in the harbours. And then he told of storms at sea—fierce winds screaming in the sails; shipwrecks and rescues; cruel, jagged rocks beneath the water; stormswept isles and maroonbd sailors. And he dwelt lingeringly on the happy evenings spent in his cabin, reading his favourite books or exchanging yarns with the first mate. He chuckled deeply at the remembrance of meals cooked by the cook with no experience and ho recounted tales he had stored in his memory, of weird and won derful happenings on strange, forgotten islands.

And still the hoarse voice talked on and the bright blue eyes were clouded with memories, till the sun had sunk low in the west and the travellers stopped surprised to find their boredom left behind upon the road. So they laughed and shook hands and each went his wav.

their cups, hiding beneath their leaves for shelter; the animals also crept to their burrows, and the birds to their nests, while all the mortals stayed inside their houses in front of their fires, wondering what had happened. All that day the storm lasted, not stopping until the moon shed a watery light on the wet mid battered world below. Luckily the fairy of the twilight hadn’t felt lazy also, or the moon might not have appeared either, mid that would have been a double tragedy.

This was not the first time the fairy of the dawn had f t lazy; in fact, it happens fai-ly frequently, especially in winter. So now il you ha ’O a stormy day you will know tlm x tis because the fairy of the dawn has overslept herself, or if it is a, stormy night it will be the fairy of the twilight who has neglected his duty.