ce seemed to be complaining anew, and still through
that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "_we can't turn a four-inch
on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This
might interest His Scientific Skippership...._"

"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--"

"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed...."

Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his
dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was
the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships
of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it
was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the
appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they
really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a
shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed
the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and
infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man
had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this
shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel
Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding
brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean
of his own mind....

_"And I will not unmindful be
Of this, My covenant, passed
Twixt Me and you and every flesh
Whiles that the world should last,"_

sang Bligh, rapt....

But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his
couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow
when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to
be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought
that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there,
uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon
an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would
be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a
ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its
equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested
from the chaos of uninvention and ordered a