I then, reciting my firm beliefs and remembering my religion, ran for the white water.  Before I knew well that she was round, the sea was yellow like a pond, the waves no longer heaved, but raced and broke as they do upon a beach.  One greener, kindly and roaring, a messenger of the gale grown friendly after its play with us, took us up on its crest and ran us into the deep and calm beyond the bar, but as we crossed, the gravel ground beneath our keel.  So the boat made harbour.  Then, without hesitation, she cast herself upon the mud, and I, sitting at the tiller, my companion ashore, and pushing at her inordinate sprit, but both revelling in safety, we gave thanks and praise.  That night we scattered her decks with wine as I had promised, and lay easy in deep water within.

But which of you who talk so loudly about the island race and the command of the sea have had such a day?  I say to you all it does not make one boastful, but fills one with humility and right vision.  Go out some day and run before it in a gale.  You will talk less and think more; I dislike the memory of your faces.  I have written for your correction.  Read less, good people, and sail more; and, above all, leave us in peace.

THE SINGER

The other day as I was taking my pleasure along a river called “The River of Gold,” from which one can faintly see the enormous mountains which shut off Spain from Europe, as I walked, I say, along the Mail, or ordered and planted quay of the town, I heard, a long way off, a man singing.  His singing was of that very deep and vibrating kind which Gascons take for natural singing, and which makes one think of hollow metal and of well-tuned bells, for it sounds through the air in waves; the further it is the more it booms, and it occupies the whole place in which it rises.  There is no other singing like it in the world.  He was too far off for any words to be heard, and I confess I was too occupied in listening to the sound of the music to turn round at first and notice who it was that sang; but as he gradually approached between the houses towards the river upon that happy summer morning, I left the sight of the houses, and myself sauntered nearer to him to learn more about him and his song.

I saw a man of fifty or thereabouts, not a mountaineer, but a man of the plains—­tall and square, large and full of travel.  His face was brown like chestnut wood, his eyes were grey but ardent; his brows were fierce, strong, and of the colour of shining metal, half-way between iron and silver.  He bore himself as though he were still well able to wrestle with younger men in the fairs, and his step, though extremely slow (for he was intent upon his song), was determined as it was deliberate.  I came yet nearer and saw that he carried a few pots and pans and also a kind of kit in a bag:  in his right hand was a long and polished staff of ashwood, shod with iron; and still as he went he sang.  The song now rose nearer me and more loud, and at last I could distinguish the words, which, were, in English, these: