955 
 DZ7I5 
 
 cals 
 
Qracious Visitation 
 
 WRITTEN BY 
 
 EMMA FRANCES DAWSON 
 
 WITH AN APPRECIATION BY 
 AMBROSE BIERCE 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA 
 MCMXXI 
 
EMMA FRANCES DAWSON 
 
 to BY AMBROSE BIERCE 
 
 IN nearly all of Miss Dawson s work that I have 
 seen is an elusive something defying analysis, even 
 description something that is not in the words. I 
 do not know how she gets it where it is; I never could 
 either surprise her secret by swift strokes of attention, 
 come upon it by patient still-hunting, nor in any way 
 get at the trick of it. I can name it only in metaphor 
 as a light behind the words; a light like that ofPoe s 
 "red litten eves"; a light such as falls at sunset up 
 on desolate marshes, tingeing the plumage of the tall 
 heron and prophesying the joyless laugh of the loon. 
 That selfsame light shines somewhere through and 
 under Dore } s long parallel cloud-bands along his hori 
 zons, and I have seen it, with an added bleakness, 
 backgrounding the tall rood in the Lone Mountain 
 cemetery of San Francisco. I dare say it is all very 
 easy to Miss Dawson: she simply writes and some 
 "remote, unfriended, melancholy" ancestor stands by 
 to "do the rest." 
 
 The scene of all Miss Dawson s stories is San Fran 
 ciscoher San Francisco San Francisco as she sees 
 it from her eyrie atop of "Russian Hill. " To her it is 
 
 R87G75 
 
a dream city a city of wraiths and things forbidden 
 to the semes of half-heard whispers from tombs 
 of men long dead and damned of winds that sing 
 dirges, clouds that are signs and portents, fogs peopled 
 with fantastic existences pranking like mad, as is 
 the habit of all sea-folk on shore leave a city where 
 it is never morning, where the birds never sing, where 
 children are unknown, and where at night the street 
 lights at the summits of the hills ( ( flare as if out of the 
 sky, " signalling mysterious messages from another 
 world. In short, this sister to Hugo has breathed into 
 the gross material San Franciso so strange a soul that 
 to him who has read her book* the name of the town 
 must henceforth have a meaning that never before at 
 tached to any word of human speech. Wherefore I say 
 of this book that it is a work of supreme genius; and 
 I try to have faith to believe that whatever else may 
 befall it, while the language in which it is written 
 remains intelligible to men it will not fail to challenge 
 the attention and engage the interest of the judicious. 
 To those who have feared the effect upon Miss Daw- 
 son s powers of time, sorrow, privation and hope de 
 ferred, it is a joy to note that her latest and longest 
 story, "A Gracious Visitation the one written es- 
 
 * "An Itinerant House and Other Stories" published by 
 William Doxey in 1897. 
 
pecially for this volume, the others being from twenty 
 to thirty years old is the best. It is indeed a marvel 
 ous creation, and I know of nothing in literature 
 having a sufficient resemblance to it to serve as a basis 
 of comparison. In point of mere originality, I should 
 say it is unsurpassed and unsurpassable; the ability 
 to figure to oneself a story more novel and striking 
 would, in a writer, imply the ability to write one 
 -which I think the most capable writer would be slow 
 est to claim. [ 1897 ] 
 
ALL those strange things and secret 
 decrees and unrevealed transactions, 
 which are above the clouds and far 
 beyond the regions of the Stars shall 
 combine in ministry. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 WHO sleeps on graves, rises mad or 
 a poet. Tzigane Proverb. 
 
A GRACIOUS VISITATION 
 
 $ BY EMMA FRANCES DAWSON <? 
 
 The first time so faint and far that I could not 
 tell it from the hauntings of the inner ear known 
 to all musicians, the chance strains evoked for 
 me by the differing keys of the fog signals. 
 
 I lived in a region of remote sounds. On Rus 
 sian Hill I looked down as from a balloon; all 
 there is of the stir of thecity comes in distant bells 
 and whistles, changing their sound, just as the 
 scenery moves, according to the state of the at 
 mosphere. The islands shift as if enchanted, now 
 near and plain, then removed and dim. The bay 
 widening, sapphire blue, or narrowing, green 
 and gray, or, before a storm, like quicksilver. The 
 hills overthe water drawing close, green or snowy, 
 showing whether their buildings miles away are 
 of brick or wood, or all is thrust into blue distance, 
 or brushed away, a bank of fog looking as if the 
 world reached no farther. The city lights twin 
 kling of long lines of romances or hidden by the 
 gray slides that shut off all in life but the wails 
 
of warning to the sailors. Great heat spreading 
 stretches, as of piles of white wool upon the 
 water. Sharp edges everywhere bringing the city 
 huddling into itself, as in fear of the coming 
 storm. It is like having genii for companions, so 
 picturesque and constantly varying are the alter 
 nate movement and exchange of currents from 
 the sea of air and the sea of water, tremendous 
 forces of life, showing me personality, pulse and 
 arteries, as traced by Maury, who even suggests 
 for the ocean a heart the equator. Their com 
 panionship enlarges and enriches the mind, the 
 air uplifting with its symbolic effects, the sea re 
 sponding to movements of far-off worlds, and a 
 highway for distant nations. 
 
 I watched not only our steamers and ferry-boats 
 and yacht-races, like a flock of white birds hover 
 ing over the blue, but Arctic whaler, South Sea 
 trader, Mexican, Chilean, and Peruvian coaster, 
 Chinese junk, Australian and Japanese merchant 
 men, Malay prahu, double-decker, corvette, frig 
 ate, men-of-war under all flags. 
 
 Never again my husband s ship, never again! 
 
 To have my house full of curios he had brought 
 from long voyages, and to be able to always look 
 at the shipping on the water, was some comfort 
 
 2 
 
for the sore heart that sought loneliness as a 
 wounded animal hides. At first there were long, 
 wakeful nights, when I sat in my window, till 
 the harbor signal-lights grew like dear friends. 
 Gradual healing came, in the stillness which 
 makes the town, although within stone s throw 
 below, seem yet unbuilt; on the pure blasts from 
 mid-ocean spaces where none have breathed; in 
 the gorgeous sunsets that give the meanest Cin 
 derella the freedom of fairy cities; in never-to- 
 be-forgotten clouds effects, as when the aerial sea 
 hints knowledge of ocean depths, showing mack- 
 eral spots or the Pope s signet, once, a perfect 
 skeleton of a whale, and, before a tempest, a gi 
 gantic, livid hand, with its Saturn finger torn 
 out, pointed long toward the Golden Gate as if 
 calling up a gale, or signalling its coming from 
 thousands of miles at sea. Often the whole sky 
 was of such terrific import that I feared Mich- 
 elet s waves, like a mob of eyeless, earless beasts, 
 foaming at the mouth, demanding universal 
 death, suppression of the earth, and return to 
 chaos; but I learned that a dread menace of the 
 sky may mean nothing here, ending in dire effects 
 on distant waters. I had no longer to fear for my 
 husband s ship. I could enjoy seeing a storm 
 
 3 
 
sweep in, slowly blotting Gate, Presidio, Tamal- 
 pais, and Angel Island, in my view hours before 
 its descent upon the eastern side of the town ; 
 or black clouds as of thunder over Tamalpais 
 fringe into trailing wreaths like smoke that blow 
 inland, shaking loose rafter and blind, and rat 
 tling door-lock; or hearing a gale beating doors 
 and windows, threatening down the chimney, 
 straining to lift the whole house, and shrieking 
 in wrath about it. 
 
 All this made the busy streets very dull. Born 
 with a sort of temperamental hasheesh in my veins 
 which makes a book affect like a whirlwind, a 
 picture soothe as manna from Heaven, a piece of 
 music seem crushing disaster, I lived in exciting 
 times, as if always looking on at the opera of the 
 Flying Dutchman. This led to my rhyming about 
 one of its airs. 
 
 SPINNING SONG 
 Wagner-Listz 
 
 I turn the wheel of thrumming whir, 
 Hear tread of life and love and hate. 
 
 I burn, I feel through humming stir 
 The thread is rife with grief and fate. 
 
 Witch-cat light purring, purring light, 
 Breathe of high wind by wizard sold, 
 
 4 
 
White horses flight in rushing might 
 By lashing blast alone controlled. 
 
 Yo-ho-ho-ho ! Yo-ho-ho-ho ! 
 
 Far sailor-cries float, dinning long, 
 Blend billowy, fray in thinning throng, 
 
 I thrill, I play the spinning song. 
 
 Twirl, wheel, whose magic moan and drone 
 
 Shades golden hope with tint of gloom. 
 Whirl, wheel, whose tragic monotone 
 
 Braids holden scope with hint of doom. 
 The wheel the wheel the wheel thewheel- 
 
 Dream-spinner moving to and fro 
 Night hours reveal a plunging keel 
 
 Where rolling gale and breakers blow. 
 
 Yo-ho-ho-ho ! Yo-ho-ho-ho ! 
 
 Far sailor-cries float, dinning long, 
 Veer billowy, stray in thinning throng. 
 
 Sheer thrill, I play the spinning song. 
 
 Roll, fashion murmur, in thy gyre, 
 Of seash ells muffling, that is yet 
 
 Dole, passion, all the world s desire, 
 Brief foam-bells ruffling our veins fret. 
 
 Glide, slurring, slurring wheel, go round, 
 Mock cordage-wail of fated sail 
 
 5 
 
Make blurring, blurring of a sound 
 As if all frail hearts did bewail. 
 
 Yo-ho-ho-ho ! Yo-ho-ho-ho ! 
 
 Far sailor-cries float, dinning long, 
 Blown billowy, spray in thinning throng. 
 
 I thrill, I play the spinning song. 
 
 In vain my friends, toiling up to see me, urged 
 me to move, saying it was not safe for me to live 
 there alone. I never felt lonely. If not playing or 
 reading, I had my reveries. In these, since living 
 here, the same scenes came again and again, as 
 if people sitting by me had always the same 
 thoughts which I grew to know, as my husband 
 and I from long companionship read each oth 
 er s minds. I saw granite quays, a vast city of 
 miles of straight lines, utterly flat; against its pale 
 sky minarets and domes of pink and gray, as of 
 great Babylon blushing into view through the 
 mist of time. Was I looking through telescope 
 at a dead world, or was this an immense, vague, 
 dreary marsh? A bog, snow- weighted alders and 
 willows here and there, and endless rows of stakes 
 along a plank-road. Big moose with branching 
 antlers, wolves shaggy and dark, outlined against 
 a moon-lit horizon. Black troops of ravens and 
 
 6 
 
crows, blown, upset, borne off helpless in zigzag 
 trailing through sheets of storm like a fall of 
 white fox fur. High terraces of birch and maple 
 lengthening into scattered pines, and yet fewer 
 firs ; then the silence of centuries felt under the 
 copper moon, beside the rivers of molten silver 
 of a polar night. Sledge, barge, caravan. A lonely 
 ship becalmed upon her tremulous reflection 
 countless fathoms below, white upon the dark 
 ness of night, with stars glancing amid the rig 
 ging. A vessel rolling with slanting spar and 
 swelling canvas, flying through the foam of a 
 wild wash leaping windward. A knot of sailor- 
 faces, lowering and heavily lined, swaying with 
 the bound of the ship and showing by fitful light 
 of a swinging lamp below deck. An island with 
 tufted tree-tops, and beach so white as to dazzle. 
 
 The second time I heard it with quick remem 
 brance. An old French sea-song which Richepin 
 calls that master-piece of an unkown, a revela 
 tion of man -and high soul-tides; the words are 
 few, the notes but five, the refrain only traderi 
 
 1 
 
tra lanlaire et trouhula, yet, as he says, all the sea, 
 the breath of space, cries from wrecks, the mirth 
 and the terror of the sailor s hard life are there, 
 and heard at sunset it has the melancholy gran 
 deur of an evocation of Night. How often my 
 husband and I had together listened to it, the 
 favorite chantey of a French sailor who voyaged 
 with him for years! Ah! that very day the Rus 
 sian priest had read in my face a famished heart. 
 Looking down upon the Latin Quarter, with 
 its rows of prim Boston houses, its Mexican cor" 
 ner-stores, its French tiny conservatory-fronts, 
 the buildings showing the mingling of foreign 
 elements in its people, "the characteristic Rus 
 sian fleck of gold upon green" shows the Greek 
 church. I liked to go there sometimes, for the 
 reverent attitude of a standing congregation, the 
 priests in picturesque hats and brocade robes, 
 upon carpets spread for them, the swinging cen 
 ser, burning tapers, and chanting of the stately 
 music of the fifteenth century, allowing neither 
 voice of organ nor of woman. Here I listened 
 to a relic of days of hiding in catacombs, the 
 thrilling Greater Compline, with its striking ef 
 fect of choirs upon opposite sides bandying like 
 a ball four exultant words. The choirs alternate 
 
 8 
 
through twenty-six phrases, all ending in "God 
 is with us!" which is at last sung by the united 
 voices. It is like hearing the earnest prophet 
 Isaiah himself, for his are the words. Thus I 
 came to know one of the priests, a stately old 
 man whose look was that of a human-faced bull 
 of Nineveh. I like to think I had a share in what 
 Aivasovky painted, that arrival of relief from 
 America to the famine-stricken Riazan. By hard 
 work I was able to collect a large sum for that 
 fund. When, on this day, I gave it to the priest 
 he said, after thanking me : 
 
 "You have a sad face, Mrs. Trevelyan. Few of 
 us get through this battle of life unscarred. I 
 have known so many, so many of the wounded. 
 To those who live here for years it is a city of 
 haunted corners, haunted not only by our own 
 old footsteps and hopes that rose and fell to their 
 beat, but by knowledge that here was a suicide, 
 there a murder, hither and yon the vague "found 
 dead." You look like a Russian friend of years 
 ago. It is one of those chance resemblances of 
 face, or figure, or voice, that are so strange so 
 sweet so sad. For life has its haunted corners, 
 too, with their own tragedies. Bitter is a famine 
 of the heart! I shall pray for your peace." 
 
 9 
 
His lofty, Mithraic head-gear did not mar the 
 remains of romantic blond beauty. As I looked 
 at him I wondered what heart-break he had 
 known or caused. He gave me a costly icon, the 
 Madonna and Child with gold-winged angels 
 round them, all the faces finely painted on por 
 celain and silver arabesques hiding the figures. 
 
 On my way home I went on the green hill 
 top. All the southern portion of the city was 
 shrouded in smoke, it towered above in the Af- 
 rite columns of the Arabian Nights, it spread 
 low like a tumultuous ocean, no more of the 
 town in sight than as if the Last Hour had long 
 been burning it. Against the east side of the 
 Swedenborgian minister s hermitage a tall clump 
 of scarlet passion-flowers added its solemn leg 
 end to the scene. It was a purple and white one 
 I had known running over the door of my east 
 ern home. The crown of thorns, sponge, scourge, 
 nails, and five wounds in this bloody guise cast 
 a weird gloom as if I had met the Witch of En- 
 dor. Grave and tired I turned homeward. The 
 owner of a fine house near had gone abroad, the 
 care-taker, a sad woman who had known better 
 days, stood at the gate as I passed. 
 
 "I hate to go in!" said she. "The house looks 
 
 10 
 
bigger and darker and more lonesome every 
 night! How strange it is that you are never afraid! 
 There has been so much crime here lately, too." 
 
 I said some cheering words to her. When I 
 reached my house I looked back; she still stood 
 there. I thought I would go over later and keep 
 her company a while. 
 
 Alone, thinking of her, of the starving Rus 
 sians, and of the priest s words, an old "charm" 
 came into my mind, and set me to rhyming an 
 appeal, not for myself alone, though worded so, 
 but meant as for all stricken and despairing. 
 
 THE RUNE OF THE HEALING 
 
 Come! forces of an ancient "healing charm," 
 Begged of soft heart and lofty soul its balm. 
 
 Deeper than plummets fall 
 It has no limitary, 
 
 In height or breadth no thrall: 
 Help! by the heart of Mary! 
 Help! by the soul of Paul! 
 
 Aid, O, brave mother-heart, full heart of Mary, 
 
 For one decree we know: 
 "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul!" Nor vary 
 
 Our souls, white shields, all show 
 
 11 
 
Like pure Sir Galahad s 
 A red cross come and go. 
 
 Rossini s Inflammatus, wild appealing, 
 Breathes, fitly, pathos, passion, depth of feeling, 
 In keen, uplifting ecstasy revealing 
 
 My heart inflamed for thee, 
 
 Thy heart aglow for me! 
 
 Hear both mild reed, bluff brass, imploring, soaring, 
 
 "I weep! I weep! I weep!" 
 Ineffable the agony adoring, 
 
 Sigh upon sigh doth leap, 
 Grief rippling eddy spreads, 
 The strings in shudder keep. 
 "Because unloved, unloved, goes Love, so tender!" 
 Let me be one with thee, Great Heart surrender 
 Melt into thee there let me glide Befriender! 
 The music-tide at neap- 
 While in I trembling creep ! 
 
 Kind Powers of overwhelming awe and might! 
 Immortal allies against mortal plight! 
 
 The ages cannot pall 
 Confiding tributary 
 
 That cries when ills befall: 
 
 12 
 
Help ! by the heart of Mary ! 
 Help! by the soul of Paul! 
 
 Aid me, high soul of Paul, illuminating 
 
 The way through dark and mire. 
 Soul of Initiate, irradiating 
 
 Cheer from Eternal Fire. 
 
 Like pure Sir Galahad s, 
 
 Thy strength can never tire. 
 Thou great Intelligences close beholding, 
 Thine things unseen, and the unknown, unfolding 
 All mysteries that life and death are moulding, 
 
 To thee naught can be dire, 
 
 Thy fervor I desire. 
 
 Of vast depths open to thy thought s entreating 
 What daring hints are thine, 
 
 Impassioned mystic! "Grace and peace" thy greeting, 
 For to thy wisdom fine 
 Move with commingling threads 
 The earthly and divine. 
 
 Thy meditation as a planet beaming, 
 
 Thy intuition like a meteor streaming, 
 
 Thy revelation light from Heaven gleaming, 
 Let faith and hope combine 
 With love, the greatest, mine! 
 
 13 
 
Heart 
 That grieved and pitieth even passing smart 
 
 Soul 
 Caught up into wide vision of the whole 
 
 Hark to the eager call 
 From life but fragmentary 
 
 To love fulfilling all: 
 Help! by the heart of Mary! 
 
 Help! by the soul of Paul! 
 
 \ 
 
 I went to a window, thinking about going to 
 cheer the care-taker, and the sunset kept me 
 there. The usual bands of rose and turquoise of 
 our twilight horizon were not to be seen; the 
 whole sky was dappled in pink as often by day 
 in white. The meaning of the low-hanging 
 smoke was shown. The air was in a tumult of 
 the strange symbolism which seems to reveal 
 personality, showing broken rainbow, fallen 
 castle, ruined bridge in the sky before a storm. 
 Here were glimpses of palaces, churches, mon 
 asteries as of the Kremlin esplanade. None of 
 the sadness of Gothic art, with its vain upward 
 reaching, but the true romance of Muscovite 
 architecture, all its wild caprices of blue, red, and 
 apple-green, of rose-in-bloom and lily-in-bud 
 
 14 
 
bell-towers, gilded spires and cupolas, rococo and 
 Byzantine joined, like fantastic freaks of frost, and 
 here and there were touches of snow. There was 
 Frederick the Great s room, coated with amber, 
 the raised parts translucent; here the famous pave 
 ment of agates. Lovely letters of the Russian al 
 phabet, in Greek attitudes, drifted in line, like 
 the decorative frieze in Oriental palaces. Amid a 
 crowd of half-revealed figures, the chief one, in 
 Byzantine style, three times the height of others, 
 even seemed to carry the long sword of Paul. 
 
 - & 
 
 f > f(* 
 LET 
 
 C 
 
 The third time, the name flashed upon me, the 
 Complaint of the Three Mariners. Close by came 
 men s voices in cooing, sputtering Russ. Sailors 
 often climed up the hill to look at the sea, as 
 actors enjoy the theatre. 
 Now, the words came back to me: 
 
 "We were two, we were three, 
 We were three mariners 
 
 ofGroix." 
 
 When I answered a knock at my door five un 
 known Russians, sailors, by their bronzed faces 
 
 15 
 
and the dress of three of them, stood bowing be 
 fore me. 
 
 "Mrs. Trevelyan," said the handsome leader, 
 a haughty Pole in fur pelisse and cap, "my name 
 is Vladimir Stroganoff. I am the supercargo of 
 the Stormy Petrel. We know of your interest in 
 Russia and call to pay our respects." 
 
 The second, a fine-looking gentleman, wore a 
 blue coat with gold buttons, a gold plate on the 
 shoulder with raised crown and stars and a num 
 ber, and a very white flat-topped cap. He said : "I 
 am Boris Volokhoff, formerly of the Russian 
 navy; later, master of the Jolly Polly." 
 
 How could a master-mariner s widow refuse? 
 I thought they knew the priest. I let them in. 
 
 The third was a big, clumsy man of over-bear 
 ing way, with a whisky-bottle sticking out of his 
 pocket, outlined through his old blue boat-cloak 
 with a look of hoar frost upon it, the salt of what 
 far seas! "I am Dmitri Dmitrivitch, second mate 
 of the Stormy Petrel," he blustered."! want to say 
 to you, Mrs. Trevelyan, you are the one woman 
 in ten that we Russians say has a soul!" 
 
 The other two were in sailor suits. The fourth 
 was a wiry man, with onyx eyes and the indrawn 
 gaze of the wizard Finns; his hair was like Fin- 
 
 16 
 
land granite, reddish speckled with gray; he wore 
 ear-rings. On his shoulder, also bowing to me, 
 perched a tiny monkey, as if his familiar. 
 
 He and the boy bowed first to the icon. Then 
 he said: "I am Alexis Prayrafsky ; and this boy," 
 motioning toward the last one/ is Ivan Bitia- 
 gofsky, both of us seafaring men, sailor and cabin- 
 boy of the Stormy Petrel." 
 
 The boy was a sad-faced Kalmuck,wearing one 
 big ear-ring. He handed me some flowers. The 
 monkey hurried down to present one to me and 
 dashed back up his master s arm. 
 
 "The castor-bean tree in your garden," said the 
 captain," looks like an old friend. My father had 
 a plantation of it." 
 
 "It pleases us," said the supercargo, "to find 
 here our petunias, marigolds, daisies, verbenas, 
 red poppies and thyme." 
 
 "Have you been here long?" I asked. 
 
 "Well yes some time, said he; "we are so 
 to speak marooned." 
 
 I concluded they were changing ships. 
 
 You find this a contrast to the bigness and flat 
 ness of St. Petersburg," said I. 
 
 "There s nothing here like St. Isaac s; that cost 
 millions,"the boy burst forth."Togild the copper 
 
 17 
 
of the cupola fourteen bushels of English ducats 
 were melted down. Fourteen bushels of ducats! 
 Our Nevsky shrine is a pyramid fifteen feet high, 
 a ton and a half of pure silver!" 
 
 "You would like Gautier s words about St. 
 Petersburg," said I, "a city of gold upon a hori 
 zon of silver." 
 
 "Our sky," said the supercargo, "is never sap 
 phire; it is like opal or the chill blue of steel." 
 
 "Always," added the captain, "like late after 
 noon on your Atlantic coast." 
 
 "There are times when this looks like a foreign 
 seaport," I said, "when the water seems to have 
 risen and crowded the city under the hill ; there 
 are views from these corners satisfying as food, 
 like the eastward glimpse from Jackson andTay- 
 lor streets." 
 
 "The water is always threatening," said the 
 Finn, "to carry out the Mexican monk s old pro 
 phecy of this city s drowning." 
 
 "There are none of these illusions on the stern 
 coast of the prim Puritans and their descend 
 ants," said the captain. "Mirage belongs to a dif 
 ferent class of people." 
 
 "An atmosphere of miracle,"! said, "suits a 
 city of a saint." 
 
 18 
 
"We have no begging friars in Russia," the 
 mate boomed at me in a hoarse voice. "It is not 
 your St. Francis that interests Russians, but your 
 bear, the favorite animal of our St. Sergius." 
 
 The boy had run to awindow."Look!" he cried. 
 "A shooting star! Come to fetch souls!" 
 
 I saw a glance of meaning going from one to 
 another till all five had caught it. 
 
 "One of our superstitions," said the captain. 
 
 I brought forward my samovar and made tea, 
 serving it in their fashion in glasses, with lemon 
 and big lumps of sugar for them to hold and 
 nibble now and then, the monkey joining in this. 
 The Kalmuck slyly spilled drops towards the 
 north, south, east, and west, like the tribute paid 
 by the New Mexican Indians. 
 
 "I used to wish," said I, "that my husband 
 would go to Russia to bring me beautiful things 
 made there." 
 
 They glanced at each other. Presently the su 
 percargo drew from his pocket and showed me 
 bracelets of globes of crystal and of amethyst. 
 The Finn had a spoon carved by monks with the 
 text: "Seek by prayer and supplication." Strog- 
 anoff brought out a necklace of rose tourmalines 
 set with diamonds. The sailor showed turquoises 
 
 19 
 
from the old mines of Nishapur , dozens set in rolls 
 of wax. The mate s boat-cloak had hidden bolts 
 of tissues woven with gold and silver threads, 
 and slippers of gay morocco covered with gold 
 embroidery. Volokhoff showed a brooch of ex 
 quisite niello work, and then a Moldavian wo 
 man s necklace of gold coins. The monkey darted 
 upon their glitter and ran home proudly wear 
 ing it. 
 
 I vainly tried to buy some of the finery. They 
 beamed upon me with smiling refusal that showed 
 their gleaming teeth. "No, no; not these/ they 
 said, and put them away. 
 
 "I would like to show you some Russian orna 
 ments a neighbor has," I said; "we cannot tell 
 the inscriptions." 
 
 I started towards the door.There was a gener 
 al rising. I found myself surrounded and got 
 back to my chair, but in the gentlest manner, by 
 my big-waisted, baby-eyed callers. 
 
 "No," said the captain; "let us look at your 
 
 curios. 1 
 
 They politely feigned interest in what could 
 not have been new to them : costly shawls of palm- 
 leaf covered Cashmere, and heavily embroidered 
 crape, of which, with Flemish guipure lace, I had 
 
 20 
 
made portieres and mantel-drapery; French trifles 
 in porcelain, gold, and ivory; crystal and gold 
 perfume -caskets, a fan that was Pompadour s, 
 some Sevres cups and saucers; rare old amber Sat- 
 suma jars; huge polar-bearskins; wide-spread ant 
 lers; carved tusks, odd bronzes, Parian statuettes 
 and groups; an emu s egg of palest green, a large 
 fan of white peacock feathers, a carved teakwood 
 table from India; a cherry-stone bracelet bearing 
 three years of Chinese carving; bits of the Con 
 stitution, the Bounty, and the first Atlantic cable; 
 from Corea a carved tortoise-shell necklace and 
 box topped with dragons and a little ivory god 
 that was never to be laid on its back or it would 
 bring ill-luck on the one who gave it to my hus 
 band, her family had owned it for three cen 
 turies; things collected through many years, num 
 berless, of varying worth, but some of extreme 
 value. 
 
 The Russians vied with each other in trying to 
 please me with stories. The mate told of trees of 
 seaweed, mountain-ranges of coral, and great 
 grottoes of amber. The supercargo named treas 
 ures of the Troitsa monastery: coats of mail 
 wrought with verses from the Koran; the chain 
 of the first of the Romanoffs, every link with an 
 
 21 
 
engraved prayer and one of the Czar s titles, 
 ninety-nine in all; Gospels encrusted with gems 
 and clasped by cameos; diamond-set chalices; 
 and brocade dalmatics worked with flowers in 
 precious stones. The captain mentioned the Af 
 rican trees of silver-gray, where the gray parrots 
 roost unseen. 
 
 The boy told of the Granovitaia Palata, the 
 Facet Palace, the whole inside known as the 
 Gilded Room, its gold walls covered with dark 
 paintings and legends in the fine old Sclavonic 
 letters, the very height of the dazzling, gloomy, 
 and imposing. "It is like walking in a story 
 book," he said. 
 
 They were all pleased with a pastel an artist 
 friend had made for lines of mine, which he had 
 framed beneath it. 
 
 A FOG 
 
 Dim, shifting shape, the buildings loom afar, 
 Is it a driving snowstorm held in air? 
 
 Almost I hear the sleigh-bells beating jar 
 White silence sound but faintly can impair 
 In scene like crystal ball of icy glare, 
 
 For Memory, mystic seer its visions are! 
 
 Dim, shifting shape the buildings loom afar, 
 Is it a snowfall spellbound in the air? 
 
 22 
 
I watch o er tufted palm the evening-star. 
 
 Then aerial currents drifting, duping, snare, 
 The wailing fog-horn warns of harbor-bar, 
 
 On far-off frosty road I seem to fare. 
 Dim, shifting shape, the buildings loom afar, 
 
 Is it a film of snowflakes charmed in air? 
 
 " A fog is as mysterious as beautiful/ said the 
 captain. "There is a wide difference in the still 
 ness inside and outside. It has interspaces where 
 sound never penetrates; this causes wreck even 
 near fog-whistles." 
 
 "In the next house," said I, "they have a pastel 
 much like this, but larger, by the same artist; let 
 me borrow it to show you." 
 
 Again I had almost reached the hall. Then the 
 supercargo was politely leading me across the 
 room, and the others were between me and the 
 door. 
 
 "Do not take the trouble," they were all gently 
 saying. 
 
 "Let the Finn show you some of his sorcery," 
 said the captain. 
 
 At once the sailor s arms were waving, and the 
 air was full of flying cards which returned to him 
 and were caught by monkey as well as by master. 
 
 23 
 
Through our silence of watchinghim there came 
 once a sound like a faraway cry, and again I saw 
 that meaning look go round. Stroganoff begged 
 for music. I played Glinka and Rubinstein. Volo- 
 khoff sang a Muscovite love-song, a mingling 
 of joy and grief; a smothered fire, the southern 
 sun and northern gloom. Dmitrivitch began to 
 bellow: 
 
 "Five betel-nut palms of Bombay," in tones 
 of a fog-horn, but was checked by the Captain. 
 Stroganoff played strains of Tschaikowsky s pa 
 thetic symphony, showing me the trombones 
 heart-broken cries, dying away, one by one, at 
 the close. 
 
 "Like expiring torches at a midnight funeral," 
 said he. 
 
 "Moliere s!" I suggested. 
 
 "Juliet s," he said. 
 
 "Why," I asked, "do people speak as if deep 
 feeling could be only in play or song or story?" 
 
 "Lord love ye, ma am!" roared the big mate, 
 "we could spin you yarns that beat playhouse 
 and book all to tatters." 
 
 "I should like nothing better," said I. 
 
 "Tell her," said the boy, "about the galleon 
 foundered off Acapulco with crusadoes of gold, 
 
 24 
 
chests of pieces of eight, wrought crucifixes of 
 precious ore, gold and silver bars, silks, spices, 
 costly tea, chocolate, and sweetmeats." 
 
 "I might tell of fire at sea," said the captain, 
 "or wild adventure on the coast of Africa, when 
 I was in the black ivory trade and could have 
 got one hundred blacks for one white woman." 
 
 "I could make your blood run cold, Mrs. Tre- 
 velyan," shouted the great mate, "all about being 
 hemmed in by icebergs, or chased by sharks." 
 
 "Speak about the Manila ship," the boy said, 
 "that had four hundred and fifty in the crew, 
 carried a hundred and fifty pirates, prisoners, 
 and a three-million-dollar cargo of gold, satins, 
 musk, jewels, wines, and conserves." 
 
 "I can tell of St. Elmo s lights," said the 
 Finn, "or of were- wolves among some wedding 
 guests." 
 
 "Tell," the boy urged, "about when the pi 
 rates counted out five hundred and ninety- nine 
 guineas in half and whole pieces, all of Queen 
 Anne s time, yet fresh and delightful to feel of." 
 
 "She wants to hear," asserted the mate, posi- 
 tively,"about a ship being ketched in the bottom 
 of a whirling blow, in pitch dark, nothing left of 
 creation but a hole of light way up over us, the 
 
 25 
 
eye of the storm, we calls it, leering down to see 
 how we takes it, or how to upset us." 
 
 "I want her to hear," said the boy, "about the 
 three ships Dampier met, laden deep as they 
 could swim with tons and tons of quince marma 
 lade, that would have had eight hundred thou 
 sand gold pieces only they got wind of free 
 booters." 
 
 "I could make your face as long as a wet ham 
 mock, ma am," cried the mate, "about a masked 
 cap n, and a lady made to walk the plank." 
 
 "Come, come," said the supercargo, "Mrs. 
 Trevelyan is not to get nervous. Let us tell her 
 our own story. You begin it, captain." 
 
 "That ll ease off a point or so for each man," 
 thundered the mate, a five-stranded, left-handed 
 twister!" 
 
 The captain began: "The Jolly Polly was a 
 tramp vessel, now smuggling opium, or musk, 
 then in the black ivory line, another time carry 
 ing pirate s treasure. I need not say what cruise I 
 was on when we sighted a ship we had several 
 times heard of from vessels spoken. They re 
 ported her as acting strangely. She carried a 
 distress-signal, the reversed ensign, and colors 
 that cried To Speak, yet she was said to run away 
 
 26 
 
from any attempt to reach her. When we saw 
 her she carried fore-sail, lower top-sail, spanker 
 and main-sail set; everything else was in confus 
 ion, as if dropped suddenly. She was painted 
 blue, with a fine red and gold line her length, 
 and a red, blue and gold figure-head. The name 
 on the stern read The Stormy Petrel. She seemed 
 to wait for us, gently swaying, as if but a mer 
 maid s fan in motion, she was so far and small 
 to the naked eye. There was no gleam from pol 
 ished brass and glass as she moved; all looked 
 dingy. As we came up there was no answer to 
 our cries. Nobody showing on deck to watch the 
 coming of the boat I sent, I had curiosity enough 
 to set off myself in a second boat. There was 
 no one on board the Petrel. We could find no 
 trace of hurt; she had not struck a reef or been 
 run into; stern, sternpost, and rudder were all 
 right. Seamen s chests and some of their clothes 
 left about were dry. They had not met very heavy 
 weather. A little bottle of vanilla on the cook s 
 table had not been upset; the pitch in the water 
 ways had not started; hull, masts, and yards were 
 perfect; there was not a crack in the grimed paint 
 of the deck-house. The deck was smeared every 
 where with old stains of blood. It was flush- 
 
 27 
 
decked; you looked from the taffrail along a plat 
 form whose length was broken only by skylights, 
 the forward windlass, and once by the galley 
 long-boat, but that and all the boats were gone. 
 The cabin was large, panelled in pale blue and 
 red and gold, and light with a big stern window. 
 There was a woman s long black cloak here, a 
 lace handkerchief and carved ivory fan there. A 
 table under the lamp bore books and papers. A 
 woman s diary, made of loose sheets, had dates 
 of months after the last entry in the log, but now 
 weeks old. It was merely bits about the weather 
 and her being all alone. There was a piece of po 
 etry in the same writing on a sheet of paper fallen 
 to the floor, where there was also a small square 
 of paper, folded once, with the word Act! on 
 it, in a man s writing. The captain s chronometer, 
 sextant, and charts were gone. No bills of lading, 
 no manifest, were found. The cargo had been 
 taken away, but small wedges of gold were scat 
 tered about, proving it had been a treasure ship. 
 Why it had been deserted was a riddle we did not 
 think we could ever solve, but in the hope of 
 salvage-claim we took the Petrel in tow. 
 
 "Some days later we all heard, one dark night, 
 the whistling of a Russian air, but could not tell 
 
 28 
 
where it came from. The crew thought the Petrel 
 might be haunted; but I was sure the sound came 
 from another side, and long hung over the star 
 board rail listening. It came and went, a fine, loud 
 whistling of a beautiful old tune, slowly louder 
 and louder, till the man in the forecastle cried : 
 
 "It s right off the bow, sir; but I don t see 
 anything. 
 
 "Again and again it rose and fell, with a hope 
 less sadness in it that curdled my blood. I ordered 
 the Polly stopped and had rockets sent up. At last 
 these showed a little boat drifting close by, with 
 a boy sitting in it and whistling, whistling, with 
 no sign of seeing or hearing us. I had a boat low 
 ered for a mate and some rowers, and had port 
 fires burning to show them how to find the boy 
 and come back to us.When the boy was hoisted 
 onboard he cried: 
 
 The cap n and the second mate! Why haven t 
 I come across em? 
 
 "He was dazed and could hardly be made to 
 eat and drink what was brought him, and soon 
 fell into the dead sleep of exhaustion. To all our 
 questions his only reply was once to exclaim: 
 
 "O! I was so afraid of drifting ashore and 
 finding Chocolate Charley and his gang! " 
 
 29 
 
The captain rose, and saying "Allow me," car 
 ried a light from the mantelpiece to a table. It 
 was the third time he had moved the lamps; he 
 had them now near windows. I concluded that 
 his nerves took whims. 
 
 "Iwishlhadn t! criedtheboy."lwishlhadn t! 
 But how could I know? And I was so afeard! It 
 was blessed hard on me, too! When I see the Jolly 
 Polly I thought it was only one of my dreams 
 till I see it was tugging another one that lurches 
 and peeps from behind just as if on the lookout 
 for me, but trying not to have me find out it was 
 the Stormy Petrel. I was in one of my queer spells. 
 I couldn t help myself. I let em take me on board. 
 When they all crowds round, asking this and 
 that, at first I says: 
 
 " I don t know about that ship. 
 
 "But I used to sit and stare at it so that Cap n 
 Volokhoff says at last: 
 
 "You do know about the Petrel; I see it in 
 your face. 
 
 " Where is the lady? says I, for I was most 
 dead with wanting to know. 
 
 "There was nobody on the Petrel when we 
 found it/ says he. 
 
 "My heart was full; I couldn t see. I burst out 
 
 30 
 
crying, and cried a good while, for all I had left 
 her there alone. She was so kind, and pretty 
 enough forafigure-head,and I liked her so much 
 till the last, and then I was only afeard. When 
 they sets us adrift in the Petrel we knowed it was 
 going to be all chance with us, but we tries to 
 cheer each other up. 
 
 "She says: We must meet some vessel. 
 We ve got lots to eat, says I. 
 We are safer here than on some island, says 
 she. 
 
 "I says: We ve got rid of Black Bill s blue 
 mug and his boosy set. 
 
 "I tells her fine pirate-stories, only she d laugh 
 when I didn t see anything funny. She tells me 
 of grand doings at court; soldiers therewith big 
 diamonds in their epaulets and sword-hilts; ladies 
 in dresses of lace like a spider s web, says she, 
 and worth as much as rubies and diamonds. 
 She d been to a great ball the night she come to 
 the ship. 
 
 " I had not gone home/ says she, when I was 
 forced to hurry to the wharf. I had to pay the 
 driver of a droski with my lace over-dress. It was 
 a fortune for him. 
 
 "Her handsome yellow satin she wears caught 
 
 31 
 
up all round over her lace-trimmed skirts, rather 
 tumbled and soiled now. She hides it all under 
 her long cloak, only on deck, when it blowed 
 chilly, she had to wear my pea-jacket and the 
 bo sun s sou wester; though that couldn t hide the 
 fine lady. She was good company then. She tells 
 me about seeing nine bushels of pearls at the 
 Troitsa monastery, just left over from embroidery. 
 She d been to feasts where she had real caravan 
 tea, the ten-dollars-a-pound kind, not hurt by sea- 
 voyaging; and oysters and grapes and watermel 
 on, brandied cherries and sugar-glazed filberts ! 
 
 "We tried to forget where we was, for we 
 couldn t bear to stay on deck, on account of the 
 splashes of blood, nor in the cabin it was too 
 lonesome. It was hard to take in that we two was 
 there alone, after all we d known going on up 
 and down. 
 
 " We are going to meet the Portuguese carrack 
 that never come home, says I, with a castellated 
 stern rising into a tower fromher poop and poop- 
 royal, and in her hold thousands of pounds worth 
 of gold and silver bars, ingots, doubloons and 
 ducats, gems, and minted money. That s the ship 
 you ought to be on! 
 
 "It does sound like my ship , says she. 
 
 32 
 
The time come when we didn t say much.We 
 watches for days a smooth swell, most too lazy 
 to go by us, and the slow sway across the deck of 
 the shadow of the mizzen-mast, like a lullaby, 
 listens to the straining of bulkheads, clicking of 
 doors loosely hooked, and the flapping of the 
 canvas, till we feels we might as well be dead and 
 under hatches. Then a breeze would send us 
 skimming like the gulls slanting against the 
 wind or hanging in the air round us, for the 
 lady makes me scatter feed on deck for em. 
 When we d feel the stir and rush we d cheer up 
 and watch the snow of foam behind us and see 
 things in it, same as you can looking in the fire. 
 She see flower- wreaths, hearts, and stars mostly, 
 but I could make out fortress and cannon and 
 smoke of battle. Dear heart! howafeard she was 
 of a stiff blow, when the rigging screamed and 
 the mast-heads leaned over, and we has to steady 
 ourselves by rail or belaying-pin. Once or twice 
 in many weeks we see ships creep out and in 
 the haze on the horizon. I hoists the colors To 
 Speak and a brand new white ensign I finds in 
 the color chest. 
 
 To show em we ain t pirates/ 1 says. When 
 they ketches sight of that the first mate with a 
 
 33 
 
telescope will run up on the main-royal yard, the 
 second mate with a telescope will climb up on 
 the fore-royal yard, and the cap n will be trum 
 peting: Ahoy !* 
 
 "She laughs and says: Think of their surprise 
 to find after all that hurrah, only a woman and 
 a boy. 
 
 "But the vessels we see gets swallowed in fog 
 or we did. And the Portuguese carrack, too! 
 After we d been hurried along for days by short 
 winds, or stopped as if anchored for weeks, she 
 gets downhearted. I knowed by her eyes that she 
 cries a good deal, but she never let me see her 
 doing of it. She knowed it was dirty luck for me, 
 too. She asks me about my folks and makes me 
 tell her things she could say to em in case she 
 ever got home and I never did. I wants to do 
 the same for her, but she says: 
 
 "It is better for you yourself that you should 
 not name me. There is only one I want to reach. 
 I don t know where. 
 
 "One day I see her leaning over the bulwark 
 rail and goes up to her. She was looking where 
 the ensign shadowed a white streak under the 
 stern that made me think of a burial at sea and 
 the body sinking. 
 
 34 
 
" Haul it down! she says, with a shiver. It is 
 too like a shroud! 
 
 "So I does, but I hated to lose such a big sig 
 nal. Then she takes spells of walking, walking, 
 walking sometimes all night above and below, 
 all over the ship; though, while she was in her 
 right mind, she was shy of the bloody deck. I put 
 off and put off trying to clean it up; it turned my 
 stomach to think of it. After a while she wouldn t 
 eat nor talk, but sits all the time writing, writing. 
 I got afeard of her big, wild eyes and crazy ways, 
 and when I see a branch with green leaves on the 
 water, I says to myself: 
 
 "We can t be far from some island; I ll risk 
 it! I d always been fond of sitting in the cap n s 
 gig to watch the foam and spray about the rud 
 der when we gets a breeze, and she didn t mind 
 my going there now. Little by little, I lays in 
 provisions, and one night when she was standing 
 behind the interlacing of the main shrouds, look 
 ing ahead, I sets to work and slowly, one end at 
 at a time, gets the gig lowered. Right you are! 
 The night was mild, the lady had no wrap, her 
 hair was dressed very fine, and she was a-letting 
 down her long train. The next minute I knowed 
 she d be a-pacing to and fro, a-singing a polonaise, 
 
 35 
 
and a-playing she was at the ball. I seen her do it 
 lots of times. Over and over I d put off going, 
 and maybe I d stayed this time if she hadn t set 
 up her forlorn piping. A polonaise is just a high 
 swagger of a march, no more dance of the horn 
 pipe sort than standing still is, and when the mus 
 ic is sad, like the Oginski, it is all sobs and a 
 catching of the breath. So I drops gently after the 
 gig, and lets the ship move off with naked davits 
 and hanging tackle. I hates to lose the Petrel; as 
 I looks up at it the spars was tossing against the 
 moon as if it knowed, from flying jib-boom end 
 to the taffrail, the whole yarn, and was uneasy 
 as I was. I was sorry right off when I couldn t get 
 back. A wind rose and carried me away. I lost 
 sight of the ship and found no island. I felt it 
 serves me right for deserting the poor lady. Some 
 nights, when the sky was a mass of stars, there 
 was liberty and brightness of morning, but the 
 others! Folks on shore don t know what the dark 
 means; at sea it is thick black, like velvet. Some 
 times all the top of the water would flicker and 
 gleam, as if thinking about me or trying to tell 
 me something. One black night there comes up 
 a wet squall, and the lightning looks to be slant 
 ing right after me. I was too scared to do any- 
 
 36 
 
thing at night, but on a calm day, though I didn t 
 know what way to go, I used to row and row till 
 I was dead tired and didn t care what come. I 
 was lonesome for the lady, and I missed the noise 
 of big sails beating the masts. I knowed no ves 
 sel would sight me, for often a haze shut the hori 
 zon in to within a few yards, and in clear weather 
 my boat on the big blue made about as much 
 show as a bird. I found I d only divided a clove 
 hitch, the lady and I had each now one to our 
 selves. So I goes on, day after day, night after night, 
 never knowed when some big monster might 
 knock my boat over and drag me down, and 
 soon I had nothing left to eat. One night the full 
 moon hangs like a big gold-piece in the sky, and 
 I could seem to hear the lady singing the Ukrain 
 ian love-song, The Moon. I couldn t bear to 
 hear her it was sweet, but just like storm-clouds 
 coming up, it made me want to cry yet the time 
 had come when I begins to whistle it for com 
 pany every night. I got forgetful spells, when I 
 didn t know how I come to be there alone, and, 
 by the powers! each day and night seemed a year 
 long. It was a rum start to find the Jolly Polly 
 had got me, but the queerest of all was when the 
 lookout soon after sighted an island, so far away, 
 
 37 
 
shining and sparkling, and the water pounding 
 so white on the reef I thinks of a bit of green 
 glass dropped in snow. The air was so clear, like 
 looking through a telescope, we see a man come 
 to the shore long afore we gets nigh. The sun 
 was like a ball of fire sinking into an ocean as of 
 blood ; there was a red glare on the whitening 
 breakers, on clouds of sea-birds, on the dazzle of 
 green and white, and on that figure standing on 
 the beach, as if he d sent for us, the man the crew 
 of the Petrel thought had danger in him, they says: 
 
 " He and his shadow is the worst cards in the 
 pack! 
 
 "It was calm as if he had been tying up the 
 winds in knots of his handkerchief. Here was the 
 Petrel coming right back where she d been set 
 adrift, and there stood, by the men s yarns, a Finn 
 who could sail a ship in contrary winds. 
 
 "The Knave of Spades, they calls him, and 
 his shadow, the Nine Spot! 
 
 "There was a little imp standing beside him, 
 no bigger than a sprit-sail knot, and I says to 
 myself: 
 
 "That s the Ace! " 
 
 Here the restless boy left the room, running 
 to the front door and back. I thought he feared 
 
 38 
 
the Finn might not like his words; still he had 
 been dodging out and in all the evening. 
 
 "When I see two ships driving tandem/ said 
 the sailor, "and as they draws near makes out 
 that the hind one is the Petrel, I was struck all 
 of aheap. 
 
 " Shiver my timbers! says I to the monkey. If 
 it ain t the whole blessed ship, from cross-trees 
 to kelson! 
 
 "And the monkey takes off M cap and scratches 
 his head and smooths his chin, and tries, too, to 
 think it all out. 
 
 "I see the boy on deck of the Polly, but no sign 
 of the lady. They sends a boat off for me, and 
 when I climbs aboard the vessel, here is Ivan 
 ready to square off at me. 
 
 " Do you know each other? says the captain. 
 
 " It s the Knaveof Spades! He has got us back, 
 cries the boy. The Petrel was here and he cut 
 the hawser. 
 
 What could you see in the darkness? says I. 
 It was Chocolate Charley, cause he suspects I 
 wants to get aboard and leave em. 
 
 " Where is he? Where are they all? says Ivan. 
 
 " Gone to the bottom or come out t other side 
 of the world! says I. Black Bill give me a maul- 
 
 39 
 
ing, and they clears out when I knowed nothing. 
 Where s the lady? 
 
 " Gone/ says he, and turns his back. 
 
 "The Petrel had a fiery set of Malays, Portu 
 guese, Chileans, and a lot of half-breeds. Some 
 of em had been ugly and put in irons; that crip 
 ples us by want of hands, and a big blow drives 
 us leagues and leagues out of our course. They 
 lays it all to the Finn. One dark night I was at 
 the wheel, but I knows what s going on, that the 
 first mate, who was on watch, is being gagged 
 and bound. It wa n t no use for me to try to stop it. 
 
 Black Bill, one of the Malays, says to me : Old 
 Jack of Spades, just keep off! You might have 
 put one of your spells on em and saved us this 
 trouble. But we ll keep you to whistle up winds 
 for us. 
 
 "Chocolate Charley, a quadroon, and Gentle 
 man George, a Portuguese, who might have been 
 an earl, he was so high and mighty and lazy, gets 
 the cap n and second mate on deck by some trick, 
 and then has four men seize each one. 
 
 " Now, they says, we ve taken the ship! You ve 
 got to agree to navigate her where we say, or 
 we ll cast you adrift. 
 
 "The cap n was pluck clear through. He swears 
 
 40 
 
blue streaks and thunders out: 1 scorn to even 
 answer you! 
 
 "The mate loves a fight, and he sets to and trips 
 up two of the men holding him, and punches 
 another on the head and doubles up the fourth 
 by a dig in the ribs. 
 
 "Look out for squalls, cap n! he says. I ll at 
 tend to your men now/ And he steers for em. 
 
 "There was an orderly set on board, too; they 
 gets at the arms-chest, as well as the others, and 
 comes a-running up and takes sides agin Choc 
 olate Charley and his men, and so here was as 
 pretty a fight as ever you see, bang of pistol and 
 clash of cutlass in a pitched battle right off and 
 the deck running blood. 
 
 "You ought to have sanded the deck first, 
 man-of-war fashion, I sung out. 
 
 "You mind your wheel! hollers Bill. We ll 
 sand the deck with bodies! 
 
 "There was a good deal of dull thumping of 
 the deck, and many goes overboard without a 
 boat and with a stiff air of thinking they could 
 walk the water, or not caring whether land or 
 water waits for their feet. The first mate was one 
 of these, died where he was gagged and bound, 
 maybe from fright at being helpless. There was 
 
 41 
 
few left of the good men and true sort, and they 
 was mostly the scared ones who never shows 
 fight. The launch was lowered, the cap n and 
 second mate forced to go over into it by pistols 
 held at their heads. The cap n was fond of his 
 ship, let alone the disgrace of losing a treasure- 
 cargo, and as the Petrel sheers off his last look at 
 us was pitiful. I knowed he was steering near the 
 wind; they d killed him as much as if they d shot 
 him. He was speechless, but the mate yells and 
 yells back till the ship lost hail of him, telling 
 the leaders of the mutiny what blasted fools they 
 was, for none of em could navigate. The first 
 thing was to help themselves from the ship s 
 stores, and they drinks all hands quiet for a spell. 
 The poor lady had heard the row and locks her 
 self up and tells through the door anybody that 
 comes that she is ill. She was such a frail wax-doll 
 they cares nothing for her more than for a foam- 
 wreath. They tears and yells and sings till they 
 drops. When they sobers up, they has a long talk 
 and decides to land at some island and bury the 
 treasure to lose its link with the ship. 
 
 " There was a stiff blow last night, says Choc 
 olate Charley to me, and we knows who called 
 it up, you Jack of Spades, and we re not going 
 
 42 
 
to risk our cargo with you. Just you find a desert 
 island now, if you values your life! 
 
 "I knows more about setting a course than 
 they thinks, so I steers in a certain direction, 
 though it was many days afore we sights an island ; 
 and Chocolate Charley was suspicious, and used 
 to stand and glare at me and want to curse, but 
 hardly dare, cause they was afeard of the Finn s 
 power for bedevilment. And I don t know but 
 some of em thought I conjured up the island 
 we finds. It did look like a vision, with its coral- 
 grit like drifts of snow heaped on the dark blue 
 water, its tall spikes of grass, its clumps of co- 
 coanut-trees with tufted heads, its glaring green, 
 and its birds of gold and red and blue. We 
 couldn t get very near, and the treasure has to be 
 carried ashore by boat-loads, and some of it gets 
 swamped in the surf. I ll not deny I was looking 
 at it, hoping it might. It took several days. The 
 rest of us men goes ashore, too; the scary ones 
 had to help. 
 
 "I finds out, one afternoon, why supplies was 
 taken off the vessel, too. Chocolate Charley was 
 the only one for burying the treasure; Black Bill 
 was for building a big raft, to get picked up with 
 it at sea, and no proof it was a steal nor trouble 
 
 43 
 
of coming back to dig it up, and nobody else finds 
 it. I overhears Gentlemen George mutter: 
 
 " If we leave it here, we d better bury the Finn 
 with it to leave him on guard/ 
 
 "If you do/ says I, by the powers! remember 
 me when the next storm rises, that s all! 
 
 "At dusk I steals down to the water s edge 
 and waits for the steady ones, meaning for us to 
 get back to the ship on the sly and get off with 
 the lady and cabin-boy left on board. I could 
 navigate well enough. There was such a thunder 
 of big rollers I hears nobody behind me. The 
 first I knows I gets flung up the beach. Choco 
 late Charley was sawing away on the hawser 
 with his sea-gully. He had a sheet in the wind s 
 eye, and never thinks how taut the Petrel was 
 pulling. When the hawser snaps, it jerks him 
 into the surf. The vessel starts off in a hurry. I 
 see the lady in the big stern-window, a light be 
 hind her. She springs to her feet. The boy shows 
 dimly, hanging over the bulwark rail; I hears 
 his faint cry for Alexis! for we gets on well to 
 gether. Chocolate Charley, carried by the tide 
 goes plunging after, as if in chase, and he never 
 comes back. The scary ones didn t get round. 
 Black Bill and Gentleman George come running 
 
 44 
 
down, thinks I cast Chocolate Charley into the 
 water, and falls upon me ; Gentleman George, 
 too lazy to do more than hold me, while Black 
 Bill give me such a drubbing I knowed nothing 
 for days. 
 
 "When I comes to myself there was no noise 
 but the beating of the surf on the reef. It was 
 broad day. There was this little man, patting the 
 monkey, "stands by me and looks anxious. 
 
 "When he finds that I see him, he offers his 
 paw, as much as to say: 
 
 " Let me know if I can do anything/ 
 
 "I was too weak for a while to stir. When I 
 could sit up I see all the litter of raft-building. 
 They must have shanghaied the timid men for the 
 sake of having their help. They had left pork and 
 rum and biscuit, cause they was afeard of me. I 
 had been simply marooned. It wa n t likely there 
 was any cache, though I hunts some, but finds no 
 sign. The company of the monkey was worth 
 more than the treasure there. Poor little cast 
 away, he must have been some wrecked sailor s 
 pet, for monkeys are not found on those islands, 
 and I never heerd of one that had evoluted into 
 being born with a little cap, which he has on when 
 I first see him. He was fine company, not to talk, 
 
 45 
 
but a deep thinker; he used to sit by me watching 
 the sea for a sail, and look dreadfully old and 
 wise- seemed to know the most of the two of us. 
 He would climb a tree and throw cocoanuts 
 down, and take care not to hit me, and watch me 
 fish, as if he felt himself above such silly trifling 
 away of time, always staying by me, unless he 
 sees I means to shoot a bird; then he runs into 
 the woods till the noise is over. Sometimes he 
 would study hard over a tattoo-mark on my wrist 
 and arm; it was plain he thought it ought to run 
 up to my shoulder; he would push up my sleeve 
 and puzzle over the matter and look up in my 
 face. So I made out that his master must have 
 had the long tattoo he was remembering. When 
 I first see the Jolly Polly staving along with the 
 Petrel behind, I says to him: By thunder! And 
 he claps his paw on his knee, as if the sight was 
 just what surprised him. When the Jolly Polly 
 takes us aboard he acts all at home, and sits up 
 in the rigging as if he was hired for the lookout. 
 The boy and I couldn t talk much about the lady. 
 We didn t think to see anybody belonging to 
 the Petrel, but as we goes into Honolulu I grabs 
 Ivan s arm, and says I: 
 " Did you ever lay eyes on that man afore? 
 
 46 
 
Over there, at the top of the landing-stairs. See 
 him stare at us! 
 
 " Lord! says the boy. 
 
 "But we never run afoul of Black Bill and 
 Gentleman George, and you may lay to that. As 
 soon as I stands up again on that there island I 
 spends the same hour every night thinking of 
 em and their raft, and dancing three steps to the 
 right, three steps to the left, and three turns with 
 my arms raised to the full moon, and whistling, 
 whistling, whistling. You get great help in such 
 things from doing of it in a lonely place; you 
 needn t think your wish with such heavy under 
 lines, so to speak; mine took to em like pitch. 
 
 "There was a shipshape gale come up that no raft 
 could live in!" 
 
 The sailor s little wizard-chum gave him a pat 
 on the head, as if in high approval. 
 
 "Who the lady was or where she come from, 
 nobody on the Petrel knew," the big mate s rum 
 bling voice began: "If she d waited till daylight 
 the police or custom-house officers would have 
 ketched her. It was along in the third watch she 
 come gliding down the wharf like a black shad 
 ow. As she sweeps along the deck we see right 
 off she was Al, fore, main, and mizzen. Under 
 
 47 
 
her long, black cloak there was the edge of a prim 
 rose satin ball-dress. She seems sort of wild to 
 find some one she expects to meet, and begs the 
 cap n to wait wait wait! But he sees she was a 
 way-up lady and was afeard of trouble. She didn t 
 tell who was to come, only says* Wait! Our su 
 percargo was a stranger, who didn t come nor send 
 word. The cap n scented some police business; 
 so off we goes, hand over hand, right on time. 
 The cap n give her the cabin the supercargo 
 would have had, and the officials overhauling us 
 afore we starts didn t notice there was any door 
 where the cap n slid the big screen he kept for 
 scary times. When we gets fairly off up she comes 
 on deck. She had all us officers taut in tow, first 
 look she was a dainty duff, with lots of plums, 
 but she didn t see anybody there. She just cries 
 and rings her hands and holds her arms towards 
 the last of the Russian shore. It is queerly level 
 to what this coast is, so flat, so low, just a pencil- 
 line between sea and sky, the slop of the water 
 often hiding the land, the lighthouse towers 
 looks like sails. 
 
 Oh! for your wings to go back to go back! 
 she cries to the gulls. 
 "The captain tries to calm her, and gets her to 
 
 48 
 
go below agin, and there she stays for weeks. She d 
 only just come on deck, biting lemons all day, 
 when we had the mutiny .There was great wonder 
 about our missing supercargo, and through that 
 it at last got told about among the crew that the 
 Petrel was a treasure-ship.We did have, but didn t 
 mean to have all hands know, six hundred thou 
 sand pounds in gold from the bigGolenski mines, 
 even where it was consigned kept secret, so far, 
 by the captain and first mate. We had weeks of 
 fog and days of gale, and that tremendous blow, 
 after some of the ugly men had been put in irons, 
 sends us far off our track, and the Petrel was a lost 
 bird till she could have all hands at work. 
 
 "I never sailed along of a harder set; I knowed 
 Chocolate Charley, Black Bill, and Gentleman 
 George was ripe for the gallows, but I didn t 
 think they d break out this trip till I found them 
 athwart my hawse. It was a lovely fight after I 
 sails slap in. Blows and kicks and cries and stamp 
 and rush of feet, and roar of shots and cutlasses 
 clashing, and the deck slippery with gore! Lord 
 love ye! it was fun ! Never got so thirsty in my life ! 
 Pity the leaders got drownded, I d have liked to 
 dangle em, a pretty row of em, from a yard-arm! 
 If all the steady men on board had been decent and 
 
 49 
 
loved fighting as I do, as a baby loves sweets, we 
 could have got Black Bill and his gang into irons. 
 And when that mess of swabs cast the cap n and 
 me loose, I was swearing mad, cause I knowed 
 we could have got the best of em, if there d been 
 enough spunk on board. When the cap n see his 
 pet ship going off with this here precious cargo 
 right afore his blessed dead-lights and knows the 
 cruise is bungled for good and all, he jumps over 
 board. All his plans about ship and treasure, all 
 his concern in life amounts to a few bubbles float 
 ing by me! I must have been within half a plank 
 of death, tossing in that there boat nigh upon a 
 month. I got out of provisions; the soft-headed 
 lubbers flung only a little stock on board; it s a 
 wonder the likes of em done so much. I turned 
 light-headed, and when I hove in sight of the Black 
 Gull I knowed nothing of it; but they sees and 
 sends a boat. I was for fighting when they sheers 
 alongside, and they has to seize me. I was sick for 
 weeks afterthey left me at Honolulu. When I gets 
 out doors I goes to the landing-stairs and sits in 
 the sun with other salts stranded there, to do my 
 share of jawing about rot ry storms and pirates. 
 "There was a Russian not long from China 
 and Japan that I had some talk with ; but I never 
 
 50 
 
thinks, by a long sea-mile, that he knowed any 
 thing about the Petrel, till the Jolly Polly come 
 a-towing of her round the bight. When I gets a 
 bit over my own set-back by it, I sees a sudden 
 change in this man s face, a whiteness, a set hold 
 ing of himself together, as if some shock was a- 
 threatening to knock him to pieces. 
 
 lt Do you know either of the ships? says I. 
 
 "He looks at me as though he didn t know 
 what I says; and it was plain he couldn t speak." 
 
 The mate took the sailor s cards into his ragged 
 fingers with livid patches of nails and set himself 
 to playing solitaire, keeping his air of bluster to 
 ward the game, and fierce, even in his silence. 
 
 "The day before I was to leave St. Petersburg," 
 said Stroganoff, "as supercargo on the Stormy 
 Petrel, a note came inviting me to the theatre, 
 signed by an unknown name. Locking my door 
 and lowering my window- shades, I dipped a 
 glass-brush in a corrosive liquid and wet the 
 paper. The common ink vanished. The page 
 turned blank. Then, like a flock of wild geese 
 trooping across a pale autumn sky, letters in an 
 other handwriting rushed into sight. Here was a 
 notice to appear that night at an illegal tea-party 
 to be given by our Circle at the house of Vas- 
 
 51 
 
sily Botcharov, late ataman or leader in a military 
 affair which had failed. This was to talk of and 
 guess at the unknown fate of some members of 
 our Circle who had been lost by the late failure, 
 doubtless carried off secretly. I was about to give 
 up this life of constant dread. I would not have 
 gone to Vassily s but for the hope of persuading 
 my friend Feodor Bolchakoff and his betrothed, 
 Nadia Hilkoff, to also leave the country. They 
 had become too well known as at least sympa 
 thizers with the Circle. Feodor was still a legal 
 man, living under his own name, with a genuine 
 passport, but we knew he had been lately watch 
 ed. He had tarnished his rooms by letting a 
 refugee stay there. Nadia was an aristocratic con 
 vert to our Circle, had inherited money, and, to 
 divert suspicion, still wore clothing too costly 
 and elegant for one of her views. She looked 
 very beautiful that evening when we three min 
 gled with the dancers at the ball in the Taurida 
 Palace; her dress was of point-lace, over prim 
 rose satin; bouquets were held on shoulder and 
 skirt by clusters of diamonds, and there was a 
 string of pearls in her hair. Feodor was as fine- 
 looking as she." 
 The Finn, leaning toward me with his eyes in- 
 
 52 
 
tently upon me, pointed to Stroganoff. I had a vis 
 ion of this handsome man, not in his fur pelisse, 
 but dressed as a military officer, gold embroidery 
 on his uniform, diamonds on his heavy gold 
 epaulets, buckle, sword-hilt and scabbard, step 
 ping through the stately polonaise, with the 
 beauty, in the famous half-mile of ball-room and 
 conservatory with twenty thousand wax-lights 
 on pillars, on plants, tracing border of friezes and 
 outlining arches. 
 
 "Petroff, one of the intermediate class who aid 
 secretly and know movements and addresses of 
 the Circle and its friends, said in my ear, as he 
 passed in a dance: 
 
 The wolves are out to-night/ 
 
 This need not mean that they would visit 
 Vassily. In a waltz Nadia whispered : 
 
 " 1 met Dudorov Katchenski/ 
 
 "Where? I asked anxiously; he was one of 
 our disappeared/ 
 
 " On the Nevskoi Prospect. Swiftly as my car 
 riage passed, he yet made the sign not to speak 
 to him/ 
 
 "We could not leave the ball too long before 
 others/ 
 
 The vision fled. Stroganoff wore his pelisse and 
 
 53 
 
sat before me. The Finn sank back, drawing the 
 long breath of exhaustion. 
 
 "Hours after midnight are especially danger 
 ous, yet Vassily s safety- signal in his window 
 awaited our coming. Nothing had been learned 
 of other vanished members. 
 
 "There was still to be removed the official of 
 the Fortress, who had lately escaped the Circle. 
 Such officers know our unbroken law, not to 
 follow if they take themselves off; but he boldly 
 stayed, and we had letters from the prisoners com 
 plaining of fresh cruelties from him. To decide 
 who should move as our avenging hand,Vassily 
 wrote Act! on. a slip of paper, folded and placed 
 it, with many looking like it, in a Chinese jar, 
 stirred them as if a careful brew of poison, and of 
 fered the bowl to each of us. No sign was made 
 as to which one had drawn the word. I feared Na- 
 dia s heightened color betrayed her as its owner. 
 I felt sure she had it when she gave all her jewels 
 toTchartkoff, an old gray-beard who had just been 
 to Paris to sell such contributions to the Cause 
 and was going again. I urged her and Feodor to 
 leave on the Petrel ; but, as we say, the mind mud 
 dled the reason ; they would not hear of it. 
 
 "Tchartkoff startled all by flinging a big bomb 
 
 54 
 
among us. It exploded from the fall into a thou 
 sand bits of candy a French device. 
 
 "Is it ready?* he asked; for names of persons or 
 things are left out of the Circle. 
 
 " 1 have to fit the touch-holes, that is all/ said 
 Vassily. His wary ear caught some sound, which 
 made him snatch the candle from the window, 
 just as Petrofftore up the stairs and burst, breath 
 less, into the room, crying: 
 
 "Save yourselves! The police! 
 
 "I managed to murmur to Feodor and Nadia: 
 Come to the ship if you can get there/ and then 
 we had fled by different ways. 
 
 I doubled and turned through our secret roads, 
 passing across gardens, and even through houses, 
 but as soon as I stepped into a main street I was 
 stopped, and twenty-four hours later was on my 
 way to Siberia. None of our Circle were in my 
 gang of prisoners. There was no way to learn 
 whether they were in some other lot or were not 
 caught. To ask would bring them into danger 
 they might have eluded. So with torture about 
 them for my close companion, I crossed that aw 
 ful desert where villages show like mustard-seeds, 
 scattered so far inthewhitewaste.To escape would 
 be only to die by hunger or by wolves. Even the 
 
 55 
 
few trees hold their branches in gestures of fear 
 and despair, softened only by powder and fili 
 gree of snow from a low sky of unbroken gray. 
 The Great Post Road was punishment enough. 
 I was saved from work in the Nerchinsk mines. 
 I met in Siberia a high official, who, on account of 
 old family obligations, secretly helped me to join, 
 in disguise, a tea-caravan returning to China. An 
 other journey of week after week, that long land 
 route to Shanghai,by sleigh through Siberia,camel 
 through Tartary, boat and mule through China; 
 but now a sense of freedom gave me strength. 
 
 Uncertain what to do, weary in mind and 
 body, I wandered to Nagasaki, and then to Hono 
 lulu, where I lingered, not knowing that I waited 
 to see, with amazement, the arrival of the Petrel, 
 to hear the story of the caption of the Polly, and 
 to walk up on his left and say: 
 
 "I was the supercargo of that ship/" 
 
 "I steps up on the cap n s right," says the gruff 
 Dmitrivitch, "and I says to him, says I: I was the 
 second mate/" 
 
 Furious with himself about his game, he sat 
 glowering at the cards. 
 
 Stroganoff had gone to the piano, and was 
 softly playing. 
 
 56 
 
"Then/ said the captain/1 sold the Jolly Polly 
 and the chance of salvage-claim for the Stormy 
 Petrel. We had a touch of cholera, and there was not 
 much left of us when we reached San Francisco/ 
 
 "Thank you," I said. "How I wish I could have 
 seen what the lady had written!" 
 
 The captain drew from his pocket a folded 
 paper, yellow with age and blue with damp, 
 opened it and read to me an appeal from the poor 
 lady to her lost lover. The undercurrent of Stro- 
 ganofFs music made it seem very touching. 
 
 "It has the stress of Mascagni s Intermezzo!" 
 I cried. "And he never knew!" 
 
 "That is as it may be," said Volokhoff. 
 
 "We cannot tie and unite knots in the thread 
 of destiny," said Stroganoff. 
 
 "It leaves the story so incomplete," I said. "But 
 that is real life. Or is it that our glimpse is un 
 certain?" 
 
 "Life is a bungled voyage anyhow," growled 
 Dmitrivitch."By the time you gets the hang of 
 your sealed orders you re too nigh port to set 
 your course different, and you re sure to wish 
 you could." 
 
 He was in another fume over solitaire, glaring 
 at cards and Ivan till the poor boy ran out. 
 
 57 
 
"What a man is to know would be sure to 
 reach him," said Volokhoff. " We have a story of 
 a captain who put to sea without paying a debt 
 contracted on a relic of the cross. A storm arose, 
 which he calmed by throwing overboard a 
 chest with the money, which floated safely to the 
 claimant. He was to receive it; it could be sent 
 recklessly." 
 
 "As we say," said Stroganoff, "what must be, 
 must be." 
 
 "Now, she is dead," I said, sadly. 
 
 "What is being dead? "cried the Finn, with 
 indifferent air, looking at me with pity through 
 that veiled gaze of his onyx eyes, always looking 
 in rather than out. 
 
 "If we only knew!" I cried. 
 
 "Creations of one kingdom, marine, animal, 
 or vegetable," said Volokhoff, frequently imitate 
 those of another. So the spiritual body is often 
 born with a mockery of physical blindness and 
 deafness." 
 
 The Pole had glided into a strain by Chopin. 
 
 "You are the only one," I said, "I ever heard 
 interpret that angelic voice as I do. It is not 
 grieving, but comforting." 
 
 I brought him my rhymes about it. 
 
 58 
 
FUNERAL MARCH 
 
 Chopin 
 
 Hear muffled throb of the heavy hearts, helpless 
 
 and terrified. 
 Death, like a wind, blowing fragile web of their 
 
 affairs aside, 
 Tore it and tattered and dashed it toearth, stunned, 
 
 aghast, they chide: 
 
 Merged in the One? Or transfigured self? What 
 
 and where is the dead? 
 Death is a sphinx, in vain Life has put ear to its 
 
 lips and pied- 
 Blank desert space ! And maybe no more though 
 
 All were to be read. 
 
 All of the body wants are met, 
 
 How should the spirit famish yet? 
 
 It s thoughts are dream and vision pearled, 
 
 For its delight there lies unfurled 
 
 Transcendent beauty of the world, 
 
 Though but pontoon to bear ye, hurled 
 
 Above what dizzy deep on deep! 
 
 Below illimitable steep! 
 
 Through vastness ye in grandeur sweep! 
 
 Yet fear and question, yearn and weep! 
 
 The answers in your longings leap! 
 
 59 
 
What know ye? Where earth wheels in flight, 
 
 Thrown by one of the shapes of might 
 
 That weave the stars in web of light? 
 
 What on the moon s far side is lain? 
 
 Why tide of wind and sea complain? 
 
 How thunder roars in rolling wane 
 
 A burst of sobs through tears of rain? 
 
 Why sap in weed orpine-tree vein 
 
 Stirs, winding as to piper-strain? 
 
 How one loam yieldeth balm and bane? 
 
 Could / change when the mere plum-spray 
 
 Engrafted on the Peach may stay 
 
 An individual branch? Nay, nay, 
 
 That great law moveth not astray, 
 
 I still am /, shall be alway ! 
 
 And I then gone because unseen, 
 Though not when wall might intervene? 
 Yet, Nature warns, mark shrivel, cower, 
 The clematis; the orchard dower 
 Of hidden strength awaiting hour; 
 The deathless resurrection-flower!* 
 Though wide the field of night and deep 
 
 *South American. One which the writer s family has had 
 nearly forty years, looks like a ball of brown evergreen, 
 English -walnut size, but expands to a saucer-like lily 
 whenever put in water. 
 
 60 
 
The dark no sickle-moon may reap, 
 
 The dawn-flushed clouds in radiance heap; 
 
 Foreshadowings so round ye creep, 
 
 But dull to miracle ye keep, 
 
 For of the hints that hide and peep, 
 
 How great is this: ye rise from sleep! 
 
 Hear leaden beat of the hapless hearts, sullen, 
 
 rebellious, tried. 
 None know the Truth s rapt exaltation, or who 
 
 could here abide? 
 Yet Voice of tender vibration! now this their 
 
 thought as they glide: 
 
 The dragging worm in his cloak of far knows 
 
 not of overhead, 
 He, too, must follow his kin, wrap himself in a 
 
 dying bed 
 What beauty rises! What joy! On inaudible 
 
 wings outspread! 
 
 He read it aloud. He and Volokhoff looked at 
 each other and then at me. 
 
 They spoke together: "You are right, Mrs. 
 Trevelyan." 
 
 Ivan came in, muttering: "Sei tshas! Set tshas!" 
 [Directly, directly!} 
 
 61 
 
Dmitrivitch muttered back: "They 11 have to 
 belay that talk!" 
 
 Again that meaning glance ran round among 
 them. 
 
 Volokhoffrose, saying: "Vladimir, son of Stro- 
 ganoff, it is time." 
 
 The clumsy bulk of Dmitrivitch, in my room 
 filled with frail treasures, made his "Stand by to 
 go about!" as he rose, seem needful. 
 
 We had a last round of tea with a general (f Vosh 
 durrivia!" [Here s to you!} 
 
 "Mrs.Trevelyan, pardon our long stay," said 
 Stroganoff,with that unseen motion that gives 
 play to the pelisse, crosses, doubles, and claps it 
 around the body, which it swathes mummy-like. 
 
 "You are not likely to see us again," said Volo- 
 khoff. 
 
 "We shall not forget you," said Ivan. 
 
 Dmitrivitch loomed over me in an effort to be 
 gentle that was yet alarming."Recollect," he said, 
 "if your ship is ever in irons, on a lee shore, the 
 Russians will come to the rescue/ 
 
 "You will hear us spoken of to-morrow," said 
 the captain. 
 
 "I am glad you came," said I; "I am sorry for 
 exiles." 
 
 62 
 
"That word is not used in Russia," said the 
 supercargo. "We say and please remember us 
 as involuntary emigrants/ 1 
 
 "Sometimes you gets in the midst of a hurri- 
 can and your masts going over the side before 
 you knows it," darkly hinted the big mate,"but 
 don t you be afeard. Just think of yourself as safe 
 right among 
 
 tt( Fiw betel-nut palms of Bombay. } 
 
 "Think of the marooned," said the Finn. 
 
 I opened the doors; they passed out, bowing. 
 
 The boy gave me the comforting cry of the 
 sea-watch: "All s well!" 
 
 The monkey, impressed by all this leave-taking, 
 took off his tiny cap to me, but the lurch of the 
 sailor s shoulder forced him to hastily put it on 
 and clutch his master s collar. 
 
 They filed off into the darkness from whence 
 they came. 
 
 The mate questioned: f( Na pravi?" [to the 
 right?] The captain ordered: "N* leva!" [to the 
 left!] and away they went. 
 
 As their steps went down into Jones street their 
 voices rose with true swinging deep-sea roll in 
 other lines of that old, old chant spread from 
 Breton fisherman to sailors of all countries: 
 
 63 
 
"The north wind, the north wind, 
 The north wind came on to blow." 
 
 Farther and farther, fainting away in the mys 
 terious night, like a salt breath of mid-ocean, 
 or cries of sea-birds over the lonely deep, a con 
 centration of the poetry and color of a calling 
 filled with the sublime symbolism of air and sea. 
 
 So I lost my friends. I have never seen them 
 since; but in nights of storm I have fancied I heard 
 on gusts of wind their voices cheering me from 
 afar with: 
 
 "We were two, we were three, 
 We were three mariners." 
 
 There was such a sense outdoors of the night 
 being far gone that I drew in and locked the 
 door, thinking "it must be too late now to visit 
 that poor care-taker." To decide I looked at the 
 hall clock. It was past two! 
 
 I slept late next day, only roused at noon by 
 long and loud knocking at the front and back 
 doors, even upon the windows. I hurried into a 
 wrapper and opened the front door. Who were 
 these urgent callers, with eager, anxious faces, ex 
 claiming, as if relieved, "Here she is ! " and"She is 
 here!" and crowding upon my steps? Not only 
 
 64 
 
neighbors, but policemen and reporters and some 
 of my friends from the Mission, Hayes Valley and 
 Oakland ! They looked at mewith an air of doubt 
 ing that they really saw me. 
 
 "You are alive, then!" a reporter said, and two 
 or three of my friends began to cry. 
 
 "Why not?"said I." Why doyou come like this?" 
 
 A policeman spoke: The houses on each side 
 of you were broken into last night and robbed, 
 and the care-taker of the fine house was brutally 
 murdered!" 
 
 "It was lucky for you," said a neighbor, "that 
 you had a party." 
 
 "You are mistaken," I said. 
 
 "Well, your house was lighted in every win 
 dow, up and down, back and front, "said another. 
 
 Was this the reason of Ivan s running about? 
 
 "And we heard music!" said a third neighbor. 
 
 "Nothing else could have saved you," said a 
 fourth; "lots of folks know about your valuable 
 
 curios" 
 
 I could not believe my kindly pink-cheeked 
 blonds were in league with those criminals. I ex 
 plained nothing.The reporters went off in a huff. 
 One of my friends took me home with her. Others 
 insisted upon coming to stay with me at night. 
 
 65 
 
It was late in the afternoon when I left my 
 friend, a sea-captain s wife living on Telegraph 
 Hill. I came down Filbert street and was looking 
 over at the green and gray of the Russian Church, 
 thinking of Pouchkine s St. Petersburg: 
 
 "Under a pale-green sky, 
 Weariness, chill, and granite!" 
 
 when the Russian priest came up the steps at the 
 corner of Washington Square. 
 
 "Mrs.Trevelyan!"he cried. "In a city of battle, 
 murder, and sudden death 9 you are yet safe, thank 
 Heaven!" 
 
 "Saved, too, by a call from some of your country 
 men," said I, and told the story. 
 
 "Stroganoff!" he cried, as if stunned, and made 
 me repeat the tales told by the supercargo and 
 the boy. 
 
 He grew younger as he listened, with his eyes 
 on fleecy clouds in the west. "Poor Nadia!" he 
 murmured. 
 
 I had not yet told her name. 
 
 The long slope northward of Russian Hill rose 
 sharp-edged with light from an amber sunset, 
 but that was not the gleam I saw on his face. 
 
 The slope is like the graceful flank of a masto- 
 
 66 
 
don, and, with the house on the brink of Vallejo 
 street, overhanging Taylor, reminded me of the 
 children s drawing on a slate, where a house in 
 the left upper corner has a path leading from and 
 to it, undulating until it forms an animal, with 
 the house for its head. 
 
 The Latin Quarter at this hour is like a de 
 serted village; but one or two passers-by greeted 
 the priest as "Batiushka" [father]. One old man, 
 more intimate, said: 
 
 "Good evening, Feodor." 
 
 The story was complete, I thought. We went 
 down into the Square to cross by the diagonal path. 
 
 "The lady s poem," he said with a sigh. "If I 
 could only have read it!" 
 
 "I remember it," said I. 
 
 We sat on a bench near the giant willow, and 
 I repeated the lines as if another voice spoke 
 through me. 
 
 A CRY IN THE DARK 
 
 O, if I knew, if / knew, if I knew! 
 
 Against flood-tide of grief and dread and smart 
 How prove my faithful love? by what sure art! 
 The Judgment Day I shall forget to rue 
 If it but brings us face to face, we two! 
 
 67 
 
Hear me! though in abysmal broken heart: 
 
 On pinnacle of joy upraised, apart: 
 Or here, unseen, the while I weep for you. 
 Who shall forbid my message? It should leap 
 
 The wreck of worlds, black chaos, touch with glow 
 
 Cloud-drift of spirits in tumultuous flow, 
 Your thought in sudden lift and splendor steep! 
 I call to you from my soul s utmost deep, 
 
 Now if you know, if you know, if you know! 
 
 The priest s face shown; the kindling of an in 
 ner light had grown into radiance. 
 
 We left the Square, following Powell street, and 
 turned up Vallejo,where Russian Hill seemed to 
 rise to meet and listen to us, abruptly towering 
 above us, dark, sinister even with its lanterns, 
 like a ladder of light for several almost upright 
 blocks. It took the part of a third person in our 
 talk, one who knew most. 
 
 The dog-howl whistle of one of our men-of- 
 war pierced the air. I thought of the erect bearing 
 of Volokhoffand Stroganoff. "Is there a Russian 
 man-of-war in port?" I asked. 
 
 "No," he replied, "nor any Russian vessel." 
 
 The hill loomed nearer, higher, the street-lights 
 wavered, as if the wisest one of our trio drew 
 
 68 
 
breath. We turned up Mason street, for I must 
 skirt the steep hill. 
 
 "There are no strange Russian sailors here 
 now. * 
 
 "Would you be sure to know?" 
 
 "Certain; they do nothing new without burn 
 ing a taper before a saint in church." 
 
 We crossed Broadway, and a few steps south 
 ward paused and looked back. I was to call here 
 for my friends who were going to stay with me. 
 
 "Come to the church, tomorrow," he said, "and 
 I will give you a moleben" 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "Prayer, chant, and the burning of incense; a 
 service of thanksgiving to your guardian angel. 
 You had a night-watch to keep you." 
 
 Even in the dimness I could see that sudden 
 look of youth still wrapping him like a mantle. 
 
 Aloft over tightly packed roofs, rising high, 
 crowding north and west above the Spanish 
 church the last street light of the great hill flared 
 as if out of the sky. From our almost diagonal 
 view across the block there looked no road to 
 what seemed a friendly sign from hidden guard. 
 
 I asked what I had not before thought of: 
 "Why do they call it Russian Hill?" 
 
 69 
 
"Oh! you have not been here long; you do not 
 know!" he replied. His right hand was on his 
 breast. I saw the third and little finger draw into 
 the palm, in the Russian sign of the cross. "Years 
 ago before I fled from the Nerchinsk mines 
 they buried on that hill five unknown Russian 
 sailors." 
 
THREE HUNDRED COPIES 
 
 PRINTED BY EDWIN AND ROBERT GRABHORN 
 IN FEBRUARY MCMXXI 
 
 FOR 
 
 THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA 
 COPY NUMBER 
 
 186 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWE1 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 
 TYD 2lA-60m-3, 65 
 (F2336slO)476B 
 
CD31S1DS77 
 
 M27075 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY