I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines were straining
under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it
would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be
carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks:
but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well
that I was immortal till I saw her.
The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous
day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a
levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches,
like _frissons_ of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true
marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours
our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking
eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only
rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for
one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand
years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that
eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid
lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and
singings--fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn
gavotte--were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the
chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old
flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the
main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me;
and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart.
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