busy wiping the drops away.  But it was a successful launch, and I have brought the family luck, while she has brought them happiness.  Because of it, and because our names are alike, her parents think of us together; and sometimes, when one begins to talk of ‘Thekla,’ the other will not know for a moment which of us is meant.  They drink my health, too, on her birthday, which is the fourteenth of May; and you know King Solomon’s verse for the fourteenth—­’She is like the merchants’ ships, she bringeth her food from afar.’  This is what I have done while she was growing; for King Solomon wrote it for a wife, of course.  But now I shall yield up my trust, for when I return she is to be married.  She shall bind that verse upon her with a coral necklace I carry for my gift, and it shall dance on her white throat when her husband leads her out to open the wedding-ball.”

“Since you are so fond of children,” said the Touch-me-not, “tell me, what shall we do for the one I have on my deck?  He is the small boy who signalled Christmas to us from the garden above; and he dreams of nothing but the sea, though his parents wish him to stick to his books and go to college.”

The Dane did not answer for a moment.  She was considering.  “Wherever he goes,” she said at length, “and whatever he does, he will find that to serve much is to renounce much.  Let us show him that what is renounced may yet come back in beautiful thoughts.”

And it seemed to the boy that, as she ceased, a star dropped out of the sky and poised itself above the fir-tree on her maintopmast; and that the bare mast beneath it put forth branches, while upon every branch, as it spread, a globe of fire dropped from the star, until a gigantic Christmas-tree soared from the deck away up to heaven.  In the blaze of it the boy saw the miracle run from ship to ship—­the timber bursting into leaf with the song of birds and the scent of tropical plants.  Across the avenue of teak which had been the Nubian’s bulwarks he saw the Dutchman’s galley, now a summer-house set in parterres of tulips.  Beyond it the sails of the Maria Stella Maris, shaken from the yards, were piling themselves into snowy mountains, their foot-ropes and braces trailing down and breaking into leaves and clusters of the vine.  He heard the murmur of streams flowing, the hum of bees, the whetting of the scythes—­even the stir of insects’ wings among the grasses.  From truck to keelson the ships were wavering, dissolving part from part into remote but unforgotten hiding-places whence the mastering adventurer had torn them to bind and yoke them in service.  Divine the service, but immortal also the longing to return!  “But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.”

The boy heard the words; but before he understood them a hand was on his shoulder, and another voice speaking above him.