Page:Words for the Chisel (1926).pdf/28

Never quite master . . . Docked at last and slid
Into the Hong Kong crowds. There, what he did

Those winter months—smoked or followed women,
Or looked for secret cures, or simply loafed,
Nobody knew . . . But he got his men
One day in April when the skies were soft
And set them first to scrubbing deck. Aloft
The canvas thundered gently. Eric wore
A turban like an Arab. Words he swore

Were taken from his father, and the crew
Declared his father left him other things,
The white man's gift among them. Eric knew,
They called him hap' a haole, and the stings
Of many ancient jests and mutterings
Drove him to sea, where he was master, where
He strode the deck and drank the tropic air.

Out of the west, out of a wordless year
His schooner came one day, riding the reef;
With sunset on her topsails she came near;
This coming rode on old Lehua's grief
Bringing her eyes unreasonable relief;
She sang that day, put on her spotted gown
And watched them anchor, haul her canvas down.

At last night came, so breathless and so black—
The old rats left off gnawing, and the tide
Mouthed with its toothless gums, the timber-stack.
A single star was open, crystal-eyed
When she let down a lantern over-side.
She swung it twice above the water-mark
Then drew it up, and blew the lantern dark.