One poor, pretty girl saw her husband gallantly
trying to make the harbour. Long, long had she waited for him, and day
by day had she tried to track the vessel's course; the smart barque
had gone round the Horn, and escaped from the perils of the Western
Ocean in dead winter, and now she was heaving convulsively as she
strove to run into harbour at home. Right and left the grey billows
hit her, and we could see her keel sometimes when the wan light of the
morning broke. The girl stared steadily, and her face was like that of
a corpse. The barque swung southward, and with the speed of a railway
engine rushed on to the stones; the pretty girl moaned, "Oh me!--oh
me!" She never saw her lad again until his battered body was in the
dead-house of the pier. A commonplace red-haired woman was in a
dreadful state of mind when she saw a large fishing-boat trying to run
for the harbour. Her husband and two sons were aboard, she said, so
she had reasons for anxiety. The boat was pitched about like a cork;
and presently one fearful sea fairly smashed her. The red-haired woman
fell down upon the sand, and lay there moaning.
Assuredly I am not inclined to imitate the Cockney frivolity of Barry
Cornwall, who never went to sea in his life, but who nevertheless
carolled the most absurdly joyous lays regarding the ocean, which made
him ill even when he merely looked at it.
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