Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/50

brothers that loved the merrows of the sea, as the Arabian poet has set down. Also there was painted lively the great Flood, with green waves running fiercely, tossing the Ark skyward. Opposite thereto was a table of the Last Day, the sea stilled, with drowned mariners, made glorious, ascending in triumph to the harping of sainted hosts. Within her, in her cabins, she was wrought with more beautiful things. For in the decks of the cabins were roses, worked in parquetry of scarlet logwood, with green leaves, in stained fir, surrounding the heavy blossoms. The bulkheads were of precious wood, carven in pilasters that had gilded roses at their tops. There was a painting on each cabin wall, of Elizabeth with her roses, of Mary in the flowered field, or of those other hallows that have the rose as their symbol. The doorways were hung with blue arras of Persia, or with grey tapestry, splendid with purple peacocks, from the nuns' looms at Ephrata. Each cabin was lit with a silver lamp, that swung in gimbals above a mirror. In every cabin was a silver crucifix, above an old censer of flowered copper, studded with jewels, which sent up scented smoke at every canonical hour. The