it gently
on the table, it fell with the shoulders and chest well defined; so she
placed it by itself in a shelf of their wardrobe, and left it there, so
that it might forever rest unaltered.

Every night the cold mists sank upon the land, as she gazed over the
depressing heath through her little window, and watched the thin puffs
of white smoke arise from the chimneys of other cottages scattered here
and there on all sides. There the husbands had returned, like
wandering birds driven home by the frost. Before their blazing hearths
the evenings passed, cozy and warm; for the springtime of love had
begun again in this land of North Sea fishermen.

Still clinging to the thought of those islands where he might perhaps
have lingered, she was buoyed up by a kind hope, and expected him home
any day.

* * * * * *

But he never returned. One August night, out off gloomy Iceland,
mingled with the furious clamor of the sea, his wedding with the sea
was performed. It had been his nurse; it had rocked him in his
babyhood and had afterwards made him big and strong; then, in his
superb manhood, it had taken him back again for itself alone.
Profoundest mystery had surrounded this unhallowed union. While it
went on, dark curtains hung pall-like over it as if to conceal the
ceremony, and the ghoul howled in an awful, deafening voice to stifle
his cries. He, thinking of Gaud, his sole, darling wife, had battled
with giant strength against this deathly rival, until he at last
surrendered, with a deep death-cry like the roar of a dying bull,
through a mouth already filled with water; and his arms were stretched
apart and stiffened forever.

All those he had invited in days of old were present at his wedding.
All except Sylvestre, who had gone to sleep in the enchanted gardens
far, far away, at the other side of the earth.

THE SALVING OF THE YAN-SHAN

From "In Blue Waters," BY H. DE VERE STACKPOOLE

I

The _Heart of Ireland_ was spreading her wings to the north-west
trades, making a good seven knots, with the coast of California a vague
line on the horizon to port and all the blue Pacific before her.

Captain Blood was aft with his mate, Billy Harman, leaning on the rail
and watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in
creamy lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell, owner and captain of
the _Heart of Ireland_, shanghaied and reduced to deck hand, was
forward