Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/20

 will." And he hacks through the cable with an axe and runs up the rotten jib by pully-hauly.

Long he was sailing, living on dew and gulls' eggs, sailing with them white bones in that there blossoming old hulk. But at long last he comes to Port of Spain and signals for a pilot, and brings up just as sun was sinking. Thirty long years had he been gone, and he was an old man when he brought the whited bones home. But his old mother was alive, and they lived happily ever after. But never any licker would he drink, except only dew or milk—he was that changed from what he was.