there through the stems of the colonnade, fresh painted, trim and dandy,

and all silent as the grave. Only, here and there in the crypt, there

was a rustle and scurry and some crowing of poultry; and from behind the

house with the verandahs, he saw smoke arise and heard the crackling of

a fire.

The stone houses were nearest him upon his right. The first was locked;

in the second, he could dimly perceive, through a window, a certain

accumulation of pearl-shell piled in the far end; the third, which stood

gaping open on the afternoon, seized on the mind of Herrick with its

multiplicity and disorder of romantic things. Therein were cables,

windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows and

ladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brass

mountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk of

that shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubber

dipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest with

the vessel's name upon the top, the Asia: a whole curiosity-shop of sea

curios, gross and solid, heavy to lift, ill to break, bound with brass

and shod with iron. Two wrecks at the least must have contributed to

this random heap of lumber; and as Herrick looked upon it, it seemed to

him as if the two ships' companies were there on guard, and he heard

the tread of feet and whisperings, and saw with the tail of his eye the

commonplace ghosts of sailor men.

This was not merely the work of an aroused imagination, but had

something sensible to go upon; sounds of a stealthy approach were no

doubt audible; and while he still stood staring at the lumber, the voice

121

The Ebb-Tide