Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/59

 Sailing on summer seas leads naturally to facile philosophy; but, lest I should sentimentalise helplessly and lose my self-respect, I put my boat about and stood back towards the reef.

The girls were crowding into their boat when I reached them. Already the rising tide had covered most of the rocks, and left only the higher ones standing up like islands in a kind of Saragasso Sea of swaying brown weed. Onnie was the last to embark; giving one final shove-off with her foot she slid across the bow of the boat, climbed sternward and took the stroke oar.

Six of the girls rowed, keeping time and stroke with Onnie. When she started a song for them their bodies swung with her music. The breeze had nearly died away. The row-boat, with its sturdy pullers, soon distanced me; but for a long time I heard the girls' songs and fancied that I could distinguish Onnie's voice clear above the others.

In December of that year I saw Onnie Dever again under far different circumstances. It was at the railway station, and it chanced to be the day of the week on which the emigrants start in order to catch the transatlantic steamer at Queenstown. In those days the tide of Irish emigration still ran strong, and it was worth the while of even the largest liners to call at Queenstown.

The scene on these occasions at our railroad station is one to which the experience of twenty years