THE SEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20886, 30 May 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE SEA.

A NEW ZEALAND STORY.

The boy and girl in the yellow tussocks belonged to a generation of the past, to an age when clipper ships with billowing white sails were familiar sights on the ocean highways, and New Zealand was still a country of isolated homesteads and wide unsettled tracts of land. Young and eager, full of hope and happiness, they talked together of the future in the precise and somewhat stilted language of their day. Too young for their elders to sanction a formal engagement without a waiting interval of years they were yet permitted to have intercourse with each other, to gauge each others tastes, opinions, ideals, happy in the knowledge that their own integrity and steadfastness during the period of probation would lead to the ultimate attainment of their desire. They had first met in the boy's home, a growing township by tho sea, subsequent meetings ruled by the power of affinity drawing them ever closer together. Now in the wide acres of the girl's birthplace a large sheep-station inland—they spoke of the boy's chosen calling, and of what lay beyond the threshold of manhood. All about them were yellow tussock hills, below a yellow plain where the sun, sinking low to the western horizon, shone on the line of a distant winding river; far in the east, where rugged mountains bounded the plain, blue shadows of night were already gathering.

" The sea has always called to me;" the boy said, " Even when I was but a little chap I lay at night and watched the stars, and listened to the sound of it on our little harbour-bar, determining then that I would be a sailor. You have read our great novelist Mr. Charles Dickens ' Dombey an(3 Son,' Effie ? and will remember how the sea called to little Dombey ? So did it ever call to me—but it called to me actively, calling for all that I could give it. I felt that my heart could enter no other profession. My father wished me to follow his own, but medicine has never attracted .me, and he has been very kind in allowing me to choose my own path in life. I think his goodness has been given so generously because the sealonging in my veins came from my dead mother Some of her ancestors 6ailed %vith Raleigh and with Drake. Effie it. seems to me a curious thing that a woman, whose natural traits and education lie so far apart from the seafarer's desires, can understand and feel this strong appeal. My mother could do this. She used to tell me how ardently in her early youth she wished that she had been born a boy that she might resspond to the voice that called to her. Her son goes where her heart fared forth. I cannot understand how she—so gentle, so fragile —could feel this longing—even as I do." "Ah, I know! I understand! The girl's answering words, . her voice, her face, were eager, " I know it too. There to the the south where the sea lies bidden a thin silver line on the horizon sometimes shows when the tide is high. The sight goes straight to my heart. So does the muffled roar when at night in stormy weather I hear, faint and very far away, the sound of waves beating on the coast. I have seen in imagination the sea and the shore in the river water and the yellow tussocks —myriads of times. Yet military blood ran in the veins of my ancestors—l have never heard of one who turned to the sea. Perhaps, who can tell ? this feeling was born in me because of what life was to bring. Ah! I understand — fully. And you, feeling thus, could do nothing but be a sailor. I go, as your mother did, —in spirit." Sharply depicted, black dots against the western sky, a flock of seagulls same into view. The girl's eyes, still eager, turned to them. -j " Here come the sea birds, she said "your birds—our birds. They fly in always at night to the river gorge. Watch how beautiful they are as they circle and sweep onward. See how the setting sun touches them with gold. They bring they always will bring —visions and messages from the sea."

The next night was the boy's last night at Effie's home; the following day he would return to his own; the day following that again he would go to his destined life. On that last eve with Effie the silver pencil-line of sea showed clear against the sky at sunset, the hollow boom of waves could be faintly heard through the night, a little breeze stirred gently in the syringa bush outside the parlour window. Cecily s skilful hands and Effie's plaintive voice made music for the evening hours. They played and sang old songs and ballads of the day, now dead or half-forgotten. He would always remember " Isle of Beauty " and its accompaniment with the rhythm of waves washing against the vessel s 81 "°> and the sound of the vesper bell heard through the floating mist-- * Like a voice from those who love us, Breathing fondly, '! Fare-the«,-well.

His first night at sea was grey and windy. He thought of Effiie, knowing how tht> wind would swirl in the branches of the laurestinus near her room. She would be lying wakefsil listening, in her mind and heart the well-known words of Dibdin's:—

If 'tis love, to wish you pear. To tremble when the \vind I near, Because at sea you fluting rove; If of you to dream at n\fe'ht, , To languish when you're s out of sight, If this be loving then I love. « • * • * *

Quick changes of the changing sea became his lot. Lands and cities known rmly by name were familiar places—hio, Oape Horn, Jamaica, London and the Thames, —many places he had dreamed of in boyhopd. Things that had thrilled and captured him in the printed pages of books, by reason if the beauty of words and the vividness of his own imagination, were now part of his life —the strength and beauty of the ship " running down the easting " in fair weather, or buffeted about in " the Roaring Forties;" the glory of the firmament in the tropics; the sudden rising of the storm heralded only by " a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand." He knew the favouring kindness of the • trade winds; the swift and violent fury of the monsoon; the mighty storm at midnight, with pitch blackness of sky and roaring waters and St. Elmo's fire upon the masts. Alert, eager, confident glorying in his chosen life-work, he carried always with him the thought of Effie —Effie, the guiding star to lead him forth, the lode-stone to draw him home. ' ' When the term of their probation was ended he had gained his first mate's certificate,—their marriage would come when he obtained his first command. Their engagement became an acknowledged thing. The day they spoke together, ratifying and confirming all that they had felt in the days of waiting, was a day of spring. He was home for a short shore leave; JEffie and Cecily with their mother • were visiting his littler native town. Fresh sea-winds swept over everything, sunshine, and cloud-shadows dappled the land with light and shade, and every blue wave was capped with foam. They lingered long on the road that ran between flowering broom arid gorsii bushes to the sea, and twilight was falling when they crossed the long wooden bridge that spanned the river on their

By M. H. POYNTER. (COPYRIGHT.)

homeward way. A flowing tide rushed tumultously beneath the structure, swirling in foam about the piles and the smell of salt was strong in the air. •***••

Grey clouds hung low over sodden city streets, driving showers stirred to ripples the muddy pools of lying everywhere, a general feeling of gloom and depression was over all. But in the heart of the young sailor who made his way from the shipping v offices to the wet and grimy wharves, where the bare masts and spars were black against a desolate sky, there was a joyful feeling of exultation. His face bore traces of weary days and nights, of fierce battle with elements, of great peril. He had lived through a tragic story of the sea—of storm, disaster, sickness and death. Called suddenly to the skipper's post he had brought his ship safely home through many dangers, and at the company's office the praise and appreciation he had received had been accompanied with promise of a permanent command. A permanent command—so much sooner than he had expected it! —and Effie his wife! In his breast-pocket was her last letter, read and re-read a hundred times. Ah! sweeter than all would be her eyes, her voice, her proud "well done!" ,

They were married in his bom© town, in the little wooden church across the river. On the evening before the wedding he and Effie had again wandered down the long road to the sea, and standing on the cliff-top saw the ocean calm as an inland lake. Its many currents, its shallows and its depths, seen beneath the evening light, mapped it into a gigantic plain, lined and scored with innumerable pathways. It seemed that there before them lay the new life together—and the road • that they would wish to tread waiting for their choosing.

The brief honeymoon ended, they fared forth together. In those days of long voyages the skipper's ship was not infrequently the home of his wife, and Effie entered her new home with gladness. Love and pride and confidence were in her face, joy in her eyes. The anchor was weighed and sail set in sunlight of the early afternoon; the late hours found the ship, with a favouring following wind, running along the rocky New Zealand coast, where white-crested waves were plainly seen beating inshore on a flowing tide. When grey of twilight came the young wife stood by the vessel's rail, her eyes turned landwards. No doubt was in her heart, or in the heart of her husband, who watched her with understanding. When morning dawned the land would be swept from view. Up there among the hills, fast growing purple in the distance, lay her old home. Associations of childhood and girlhood were left behind there, loved parents and her sister-comrade —and the lonely night was fast falling over land and sea. Oh, love! oh love! that gives to the woman the crown and glory of life, yet with the giving asks from her such sacrifice —such courage!

It was for Effie now that_ the new world opened; the old familiar things seen through her eyes new again to her husband. The possession of Effie changed his world. No longer was she with him only in vision. It was Effie herself who sat on the hatch in the wind and sunshine, watching the billowing white sails, and the scud of clouds across the sky; Effie who gazed spellbound at the wonder of some calm phosphorescent night in the tropics; whose face he saw in the light of the binnacle lamp with a curtain of darkness behind. How she revelled in the things that be loved, in the places he knew. The coral reefs and blue waters of Pacific islands; the white cliffs of Dover rising from a grey sea; Gibraltar, with its hiuden guns behind a screen of red geraniums; the spicy fragrance of the snore wind off Ceylon; the swift yellow tide in the Bay of Fundy—all that' appeals to the heart and imagination of the sea-lover became hers. And possessing such affinity of tastes they knew happiness to the full.

For two days and nights the storm had raged, reaching its full fury on the second night and at dawn of the third day suddenly subsiding to an unexpected peaca. Through it ail, anxious, vigilant, the captain never left the post of command. They had been in great jeopardy, now at daybreak he knew the danger past, and the thought of rest was sweet. In his cabin Effie waited. She was seated on a locker, fully dressed in preparation for any emergency; from the porthole behind her a rift of dawn-light could be seen, piercing the grey clouds and falling on the sea. He took her in his arms.

" Dear, it has been a long watch, and you have kept it in loneliness." " God was with us all," she answered softly, " and He has preserved us. Dear heart, I have been watching the subduing of the storm—those "beams of light that herald the break of day. Atad I remember —though all the anxious _ timfl one might well forget—that this is the twenty-second day of the month." " Love, what of that?" " This is tho dawn of Sunday. To-day in the churches they will read the morning psalms. ' They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters. These men see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep . . . 1 . at His word the stormy wind ari'seth . . . they cry unto the Lord in their trouble . • • maketh the storm to cease. . . . He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be . . . ' "

Death called —out of the black darkness of sea and sky. All that human skill could do was done—and had failed; God witheld the miracle that could have saved. On his doomed vessel, faithful to the last, the captain stood with his wife beside him. A chance of life had been hers, but she had chosen death with him, and they waited, sustained by the simple unquestioning faith of their day Through many years they had known and weathered countless storms; now God had destined for them 110 haven of this world. The husband spoke:—

"Wife, are you afraid?" His arm was about her, her head against his breast. "Not when we are together —when you are with me." " Love, do you regretr-have you ever regretted that you cast in your lot with mine ?" ... " Never!—never! Life without you is less to me than death." " Dear wife! wo go to God. Do you remember the words of that old song—that you have so often sung: In ocean caves still safe with Thoe, The germ of immortality. that we believe—truly, implicitly!" She raised her face to nis, even in the darkness he knew how steadfast were her eyes. " Our faith is sure," she said, " powerful. Mightier than death. Keep your arm about me, —so, dear love, even when the sea engulfs •us and we go down to the depths." ******

The boy in the yellow tussocks roused from a reverie, from a momentary dream. The flock of seagulls had swept from the sunset light into the, shadows of the east, but were still visible —black dots now fast disappearing in the river gorge. Yet in that short space of moments 01.ly the boy's mind, untrammelled by the limitations of time or ithe flesh, had roaitied a world, had lived a life-time. Had he seen but pictures of his imagination ? or had the passing gulls brought vision of the things that were to be—of the uitimate end of all ? He spoke undaunted.

" Yes, I must be a sailor; I must go to the sea. There is no other way." " And , I," said the girl softly, r 'l go with you, bodily as far as God permits—in spirit with you always."