"OLD SAILOR."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20722, 15 November 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

"OLD SAILOR."

A NORTH SHORE MEMORY.

liY ISABEL M. CI.UETT,

Long ago, when many a staid matron of to-day was a little bare-legged girl running about fhe North Shore beaches, there was one among them who loved the sea and ships and sailing with an almost mature passion. Not that, she had ever been on the sea except for an occasional trip across the harbour on the ferry, but deep within her small soul thero lingered some atavistic yearning for the. open sea, the wind singing in tho cordage of a tall ship, the slap and buffet of racing waves, the clouds of rising spray, all the life and stir and motion of a ship upon the

Down on tho Cheltenham shore, at the edge of tho tide, where the foam-fringed ripples ran over her bare brown toes with a cool caress, she would stand staring out to sea dreamily, watching the ships go by with old pnrplo 2 three-peaked Rangitoto for a background. There were not so many ships in thoso days. . . Some she knew by name . . the little coastal vessels, Rose Casey and Minnie Casey, each with its ruffled smoke-plume like the dishevelled hair ol a girl in the wind, the little Rolomahana and the big Rotomahana, which the boys —so amusingly—called tho " Rotten Banana."

But it was the sailing ships she looked for and loved—a barque going out under clouds of snowy canvas as stately and graceful as a lady in a cotillion, a broadbosomed scow with her patched sails made beautiful by distance, a slim yacht heeling and dancing like a curveting horse. The little girl would stand there and gaze until the ship became only a dim cloud on the far, blue horizon and then melted in the mists of distance. . . and she would sigh as she turned away with her eyes still full of sea-dreams. Running Away to Sea.

" Old Sailor" they called this scrap of a girl ironically along that beach, and sho accepted the name gravely. One day she ran away to sen, or at least she liked to imagine that was what she had done. In reality she left her own familiar sheltered beach and walked a long, long way to a placo known as Brick Bay—it has another name now, more elegant but less descriptive. In the trim roads, the closesct villas and flowering gardens which are there to-day one could not hope to recognise the beautiful, wild, almost roadless region through which the Old Sailor tramped that day with her blue-spotted handkerchief on a stick her shoulder.

There were thickets of flowering teatree and golden gorse growing thickly along the cliffs, and wastes of tall, bronzogieen bracken, and here and there a small solitary house in a small clearing. Cattle tracks ran here and there, and there was a subdued jangling of'bells in the scrub, and the small sounds of gorse-pods cracking in the hot sun. The Old Sailor tramped on sturdily until the rough road dwindled down to a narrow track, and out through the tall fern and starry tea-tree she caught lovely glimpses of a sapphire-blue sea—and ships. When she came to the beach.it was no surprise to her to see a ship, her ship, lying in the offing. It was a very old ship, an abandoned bulk of a sbip with the seagulls ranged in rows along its ancient sides, but as it rose and fell to the lapse and swell of the waves, its quaint figure-head of a woman in a sky-blue dress and with stiff curls on her neck seemed to beckon the Old Sailor, and a fever of desire to board that sbip awoke in her. And a way was found for her, as, of course, it had to be. Aboard a Derelict. A fisherman was putting off in a dinghy, and it seemed that he was going to that ship himself to sit and dangle his heels over her side and fish for piper. Grinning at her good-naturedly bo agreed to givo her passage, and soon with a thrill which tingled to her toes sho found herself on the ship. Poor, forlorn old derelict—paint less, scarred and battered, with the rich bronze-green of verdigris on the little brass-work sho bad left, her anchorchains rusty, hoi docks white with the droppings of scabirds . . . her grace and beauty had all departed, but the romance and mystery of the sea 'seemed lo blow like a sea-breeze about the heart of the Old Sailor as she stood on the deserted decks. Sho was very quiet, the Old Sailor —the fisherman, smoking placidly over bis drifting lines, forgot licr—but she explored the old ship from end to end. She poked here, she pried there, she peered down the rusty com pariioiiwav and into the musty gloom of tho foc'sle; she laid small hands on the stiff old wheel and thrilled lo the first uneasy shudder of the ship as sho swung lo the turn of the tide, sho heard the rusty chains creaking and leaned over to watch tho nodding reflection of the figure-head wavering in the wrinkled green water under the stein.

And in fancy she was far away, adventuring on long cruises, breasting blue seas and daring white-fringed breakers in incredibly remote islets, winging home with holds crammed with rare merchandise and exotic treasure. She saw the towering sails rising tier upon tier of snowy canvas along tho yards, heard tho stiff breeze humming aloft, and tho sailors voices, and felt that exquisite, trembling, swaying motion as she drew away from tho land, and heard the liquid, bubbling chuckle of water under her forefoot. A Tragic End.

To justly incensed and worried parents that evening she had onlv confused explanations to offer as to where she had been. Whore had she not been ? She never set foot upon her galleon of romance again, but long after that she heard with wrath and horror that the ship—her ship of dreams—was to be blown up in the Channel. It was some occasion of public rejoicing and the old ship was to be " butchered to make a Roman holiday." She saw the horrid thing done, watching the distant grey hull from the beach until her eyes ached, half fascinated, half repelled. fearful of missing the great moment, yet longing for it to be over. it came. A dull shuddering boom, a flash and roar and a sudden up-leaping mass of solid blackness hurled skyward, then a fountain of boiling-white water and a rain of spars and planks and twisted particles, a rattling, pattering deluge of foam and spray and thensave for floating wreckage, nothing left but a patch of white seething water and a little cloud of smoke, slowly clearing on the horizon. The Old Sailor throw herself down on the sand and w*?pt.