Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/135

Rh hair was gray. Those who stayed by the Cygnet tried to take her to the Red Sea. On the way they took a rich Portuguese ship, which they gutted. Later on, some of the Cygnet's men went off with a New York slaver; and at last the whole crew left her, in order to go to Achin, "having heard there was plenty of Gold there." Some sailors of another vessel "undertook to carry her for England"; but she was old and rotten; and her days above sea were numbered. "In St. Augustin's Bay in Madagascar" her crew went ashore, having broken their hearts at her pumps ever since they joined her. In St. Augustin's Bay she slowly filled to her portsills, and at last sank gracefully, her little blue vane still fluttering, to puzzle the mermaids with her bales of silk stockings.