Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/196

184 the sails; and ever around them, and really above, for the sea seemed to rise up bowl-wise to meet the horizon, the shifting sapphire of the waves, their tips glinting like fire flies far brighter than those of the night.

And then the buoyant grace, the brave strength of the ship, the aspiration of the tall masts, so like the soul's own, the delicate pattern of the rope-mazes, the curve of the filled sail!

She yielded to the temptation.

"And you say you know him?" again the girl asked.

"I swear it, Señorita. To many ports I go and in many ships I sail—Engleesh and Français and those from Etalee and my own Countree and many more" (Sally loved to listen to the flowing ripple of his r's). "I see him when he sail, an his wife on the wharf an' the poor little bebee. An also I see his bones."

"Now, Dick, that is too much."

"Believe me, Señorita, have I not swear by San Juan el Moro?" (He named him reverently in the Spanish phraseology again, this particular saint being the patron of this particular story. She wondered how he never mixed his tales and their protecting patrons): "Si, I saw his bones on the shore."

"Well, never mind the bones, Dick, sing it again."

So over he sang that song. It was English, but neither the polyglot patois nor its haunting music, as the gypsy interpreted it, can be here reproduced any more than those elusive qualities in the tale itself. We will give it in Sally's pretty paraphrase as she sang it seven years later to her children,