“I don’t—­a poor girl believing that Heaven made her kind for the high people’s pleasure.  No, I don’t like that.  And ’hair as silk as tasselled corn!’ Do you like tasselled corn hair?”

“Why, no—­in a man.  But my own being black—­”

“Hush!  Black’s best.  No, you’re not intended for that kind of writing.”

“But here—­listen: 

  “’True love can neither hate nor scorn,
  And ne’er will true love pass away.’

“Don’t you like that?”

“Something like it’s been said so often.  Why don’t you put it in your own words?” She took up another sheet.  “What’s this about?”

“That’s about a day and night at sea—­a fine day in the Trades, such a day as to-day—­and last night.”

“It was a beautiful moon last night, wasn’t it?” And she read to herself.  Coming to the last stanza, she read aloud, unconsciously I think: 

  “The stars gleamed out of a purple light,
  The moon trembled wide on the sea;
  The Western Ocean smiled that night—­
  Sweetheart, ’twas a dream of thee!”

She paused.  “But the ocean doesn’t smile.”  “But it does.  Smiles and frowns, and roars and coos, and coaxes and threatens, and strikes and caresses, and leaps and rolls—­and so many other things.  I’ve seen it.  And Captain Blaise will tell you the same.”

She looked strangely at me.  In the deep sea I had seen, at times, that deep dark blue of her eyes—­ultramarine, they call it; but hers softer.  I almost told her so, but I was afraid.

She looked away and repeated softly: 

  “’The Western Ocean smiled that night—­Sweetheart,
  ‘twas a dream of thee!’”

It’s pretty, but more like what men who cruise for pleasure would write.  You’re a sailor—­have taken a sailor’s chances.  Why don’t you write like a sailor?  It is a sad sea, a terrible sea, despite all your beautiful blue Trades.  Why don’t you write of the tragic sea?”

“I knew that some time you would say something like that.  I’ve seen it in your eyes before.”

“You have?”

“Why, many times.  And so, here.”  And from between the pages of Captain Blaise’s book of verse I drew another sheet.  At that time I would have been ashamed to let anybody else see these things, but I did not mind her.  “Here,” I said, “is one I felt.  One night in the Caribbean we were caught in a tornado, and we thought—­Captain Blaise said afterward he thought so too—­that we had stood our last watch.  And at the height of it—­we could do nothing but stand by—­one of the crew, a young fellow—­I was only sixteen years old myself then—­said to me, ’Oh, Master Guy, what will she say when she hears?’ He meant his young wife.  He’d been married just before we put out, and she’d come down to the ship to see him off.  So listen: 

  “’The spray, most-like, was in my eyes,
    He waved his hand to me—­
  The wind it blew a gale that day
    When he sailed out to sea.’”