Page:Literary Lapses - Leacock - 1919.djvu/239

  A knot in it struck a plank and it glanced off.

Too frightened to remain below, the poet raised one of the hatches by picking out the cotton batting and made his way on deck. He crawled to the wheel-house.

The skipper stood lashed to the helm all stiff and stark. He bowed stiffly to the poet. The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow on his fixed and glassy eyes. The man was hopelessly intoxicated.

All the crew had disappeared. When the missile thrown by the captain had glanced off into the sea, they glanced after it and were lost.

At this moment the final crash came.

Something hit something. There was an awful click followed by a peculiar grating sound, and in less time than it takes to write it (unfortunately), the whole wreck was over.

As the vessel sank, Longfellow's senses left him. When he reopened his eyes he was in his own bed at home, and the editor of his local paper was bending over him.

"You have made a first-rate poem of it, Mr. Longfellow," he was saying, unbending