bound to the helm, and well for him—­a slip would have cost him his life, he would have been carried into the sea.  An excellent sailor, yet even he was alarmed at the canvas we carried, so he confided to me; but my skipper knew his business, a first-rate man that skipper, the best sailor I have ever met.  There are few like him left, for the art of sailing is nearly a lost art, and the difficulty of getting men who can handle square sails is extraordinary.  But this one, the last of an old line, came up, crying out quite cheerfully, “Sir Owen, we’re in luck indeed to have caught the trades so soon.”

“Day after day, night after night, we flew like a seagull.  ’Record sailing,’ my skipper often cried to me, telling me the number of knots we had made in the last four-and-twenty hours.”

“And the albatrosses, I hope you didn’t catch one?”

“One day the skipper suggested that we should, the breast feathers being very beautiful; and, the wind having slackened a little, a hook was baited with a piece of salt pork, which the hungry bird seized.  As soon as he was drawn on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew.  You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room.  You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird with their short black pipes.”

“But the breast feathers?”

“We didn’t kill the bird; I wouldn’t allow him to be killed.  We threw him overboard, and down into the sea he went like a log.”

Evelyn asked if he were drowned.

“Albatrosses don’t drown.  He swam for a time and fluttered, and at last succeeded in getting on the wing.  I was very glad to see him float away, and was still more glad a few minutes afterwards, for before the bird was out of sight a sign appeared in the heavens, and I began to think of the story of ‘The Ancient Mariner.’  You know—­”

“Yes, I know the story, how all his misfortunes arose from the killing of an albatross.  But what was the sign?”

“A dull yellow like a rainbow, only more pointed, and my skipper said to me, ’Sir Owen, that is one of them hurricanes; if I knew which way she was going I’d try to get out of the way as fast as I could, for we shall be torn to pieces in a very few minutes.’  I assure you it was an anxious moment watching that red, yellow light in the sky; it grew fainter, and eventually disappeared, and the skipper said, ’We have just missed it.’  A few days afterwards we came into the Mauritius, and the first thing we saw was a great vessel in the ports, her iron masts twisted and torn just like hairpins, Evelyn.  She had been caught in the tornado, a great three-masted vessel....  We should have gone down like an open boat.”

“And after you left the Mauritius your destination was—­”