She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his sagacious moderation; long days of planning, of loving care in building; the great joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of the seas; a perfect because a wandering home; his independence, his love—­and his anxiety.  He had often heard men say that Tom Lingard cared for nothing on earth but for his brig—­and in his thoughts he would smilingly correct the statement by adding that he cared for nothing living but the brig.

To him she was as full of life as the great world.  He felt her live in every motion, in every roll, in every sway of her tapering masts, of those masts whose painted trucks move forever, to a seaman’s eye, against the clouds or against the stars.  To him she was always precious—­like old love; always desirable—­like a strange woman; always tender—­like a mother; always faithful—­like the favourite daughter of a man’s heart.

For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand and listen—­and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promising whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along the smooth black-painted sides of his craft.  What passed in such moments of thoughtful solitude through the mind of that child of generations of fishermen from the coast of Devon, who like most of his class was dead to the subtle voices, and blind to the mysterious aspects of the world—­the man ready for the obvious, no matter how startling, how terrible or menacing, yet defenceless as a child before the shadowy impulses of his own heart; what could have been the thoughts of such a man, when once surrendered to a dreamy mood, it is difficult to say.

No doubt he, like most of us, would be uplifted at times by the awakened lyrism of his heart into regions charming, empty, and dangerous.  But also, like most of us, he was unaware of his barren journeys above the interesting cares of this earth.  Yet from these, no doubt absurd and wasted moments, there remained on the man’s daily life a tinge as that of a glowing and serene half-light.  It softened the outlines of his rugged nature; and these moments kept close the bond between him and his brig.

He was aware that his little vessel could give him something not to be had from anybody or anything in the world; something specially his own.  The dependence of that solid man of bone and muscle on that obedient thing of wood and iron, acquired from that feeling the mysterious dignity of love.  She—­the craft—­had all the qualities of a living thing:  speed, obedience, trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacity to do and to suffer—­all but life.  He—­the man—­was the inspirer of that thing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind.  His will was its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of its existence.  He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this feeling into the soundless formulas of thought.  To him she was unique and dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen tons register—­a kingdom!