I answered, “Ay, ay, sir,” and verily believed that this would be a fine performance.  We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent style.  There must have been many open mouths and following eyes on board those ships—­Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or two—­who had all hoisted their flags at eight o’clock as if in honour of our arrival.  It would have been a fine performance if it had come off, but it did not.  Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became untrue to his temperament.  It was not with him art for art’s sake:  it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty he paid for that greatest of sins.  It might have been even heavier, but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we knock a large hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white.  But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to “Let go!” that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from his trembling lips.  I let them both go with a celerity which to this day astonishes my memory.  No average merchantman’s anchors have ever been let go with such miraculous smartness.  And they both held.  I could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water.  Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker—­nothing worse.  And a miss is as good as a mile.

But not in art.  Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, “She wouldn’t luff up in time, somehow.  What’s the matter with her?” And I made no answer.

Yet the answer was clear.  The ship had found out the momentary weakness of her man.  Of all the living creatures upon land and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences, that will not put up with bad art from their masters.

X.

From the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes a circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right down to her water-line; and these very eyes which follow this writing have counted in their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic ring, not very far from the Azores—­ships more or less tall.  There were hardly two of them heading exactly the same way, as if each had meditated breaking out of the enchanted circle at a different point of the compass.  But the spell of the calm is a strong magic.  The following day still saw them scattered within sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together.  For this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was heading the flight.  One could have imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall, leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.