The Harbor. Ernest Poole

details of color and sound. And I felt suddenly such a deep delight as I had never dreamed of. To look around and listen and gather it into me and remember. This was great, no doubt about it—it fitted into all that was fine!

      "This is really what I want to do—I'd like to learn to do it well—I'd like to do it all my life!"

      Slower, more fearfully, I drew near. Would anything happen to spoil it all? There she lay, the long white ship, laden deep, settled low in the water. I could see the lines of little dark men heaving together at the ropes. Each time they hove they sang the refrain, which, no doubt, was centuries old, a song of the winds, the big bullies of the ocean, calling to each other as in some wild storm at sea they buffeted the tiny men who clung to the masts and spars of ships:

      "Blow the man down, bullies,

       Blow him right down!

       Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!

       Give us the time to blow the man down!"

      But what were the verses? I could hear the plaintive tenor voice of the chantyman who sang them—now low and almost mournful, now passionate, thrilling up into the night, as though yearning for all that was hid in the heavens. Could a man like that feel things like that? But what were the words he was singing, this yarn he was spinning in his song?

      I came around by the foot of the slip and walked rapidly up the dockshed toward one of its wide hatchways. The singing had stopped, but as I drew close a rough voice broke the silence:

      "Sing it again, Paddy!"

      I looked out. Close by on the deck, in the hard blue glare of an arc-light, were some twenty men, dirty, greasy, ragged, sweating, all gripping the ropes and waiting for Paddy, who rolled his quid in his mouth, spat twice, and then began:

      "As I went awalking down Paradise Street

       A pretty young maiden I chanced for to meet."

      A heave on the ropes and a deafening roar:

      "Blow the man down, bullies,

       Blow him right down!

       Hey! Hey! Blow the man down!"

      Again the solo voice, plaintiff and tender:

      "By her build I took her for Dutch.

       She was square in the stuns'l and bluff in the bow."

      The rest was a detailed account of the night spent with the maiden. Roar on roar rose the boisterous chorus: "Blow the man down, bullies, blow him right down!" The big patched, dirty sails went jerking and flapping up toward the stars, which from here were so faint they could barely be seen. And the ship moved out on the harbor.

      "There go the folk songs of the seas," I thought disgustedly, looking out on the water now showing itself grease-mottled in the first raw light of day.

      I tried other songs with my artist's ears and found them all much like the first, the music like the very stars, the words like the grease and scum on the water. I was about giving up my search when I met my old friend, the watchman.

      "Well, did ye find the chanties?" he asked.

      "Yes," I said. "They can't be printed." His old eyes twinkled merrily:

      "Of course they can't. An' most songs an' stories can't. But I'll give ye a nice little song ye can print. It's the oldest chanty of 'em all. I'll try to remember an' write it down."

      Here is the song he gave me:

      ROLLING HOME

      To Australia's fair-haired maidens

       We will bid our last good-bye.

       We are going home to England,

       We may never more see you.

      Rolling home, rolling home,

       Rolling home across the sea,

       Rolling home to merry England,

       Rolling home dear land to thee.

      We will leave you our best wishes

       As we leave your rocky shores,

       We are going home to England,

       We may never see you more.

       Rolling home....

      Up aloft amidst her rigging

       Spreading out her snow white sails,

       Like a bird with outstretched pinions,

       On we speed before the gale.

       Rolling home....

      And the wild waves, as we leave them,

       Seem to murmur as they roll;

       There are hands and hearts to greet thee

       In that land to which you go.

       Rolling home....

      Cheer up, Jack, fond hearts await thee,

       And kind welcomes everywhere;

       There are hands and hearts to greet thee,

       Kind caresses from the fair.

      Rolling home, rolling home,

       Rolling home across the sea,

       Rolling home to merry England,

       Rolling home dear land to thee.

      "Do they ever sing those words?" I asked suspiciously. The old Irishman looked steadily back.

      "Sure they sing 'em—sometimes," he said. "It's the same thing as them other songs—only nicer put. Put to be printed," he added.

      He found me others "put to be printed." Soon I had quite a collection. And with the help of my German teacher I wrote down the music.

      "There are not enough for a book," he said. "Why don't you write an article, tell where you found them, put them in, and send it to a paper? So you can give them to the world."

      This I at once set out to do. In the writing I found again that deep delight I had had on the dock, just far enough off to miss the dirt, the sweat and the words of the song. I showed the article to my mother, and she was surprised and delighted. Working together, in less than a week we had polished it off. I heard her read it aloud to my father, I watched his face, and I saw the grim smile that came over it as he asked me,

      "Are those the words you heard them sing?"

      "Not all of them are," I answered. And suddenly, somehow or other, I felt guilty, as though I had done something wrong. But angrily I shook it off. Why should I always give in to his harbor? This that I had written was fine! This was Art! At last in spite of him and his docks I had found something great that I could do!

      When the article was taken by a Sunday paper in New York and a check for eight dollars was sent me with a brief but flattering letter, my pride and hopes rose high. The eight dollars I spent on a pin for my mother, as "Pendennis" or some other boy genius had done. When the article appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power."

      "That boy will go far," I heard one cultured old gentleman say. And I lost no time in starting out. No musical career for me, down came Beethoven from my wall, for I was now a writer. And not of mere articles, either. Inside of six months I had written a dozen short stories, and when each of these in turn was rejected I began to plan out a five-act play. But here my mother stopped me.

      "You're trying to go too fast," she said. "Think of it, you are barely nineteen. You must give up everything else just now and spend all your time getting ready for college. For if you are going to be a strong writer, as I hope, you need to learn so many things first. And you will find them all in college—as I did once when I was young," she added a little wistfully.

CHAPTER VI