ess, roughens the outside but keeps
sweet the kernel of its servants' soul. The old sea; the sea of many
years ago, whose servants were devoted slaves and went from youth to age
or to a sudden grave without needing to open the book of life, because
they could look at eternity reflected on the element that gave the life
and dealt the death. Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea
of the past was glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger,
capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing
to fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into boundless
faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty
was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity
of its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. Strong
men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by
its grace--to die by its will. That was the sea before the time when the
French mind set the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal
but profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless
steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite. The
hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in
order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends. The
mystery was destroyed. Like all mysteries, it lived only in the hearts
of its worshippers. The hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving
and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering
the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and
exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful
mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea
of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up
wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of the enslaving charm of its
vastness, stripped of its beauty, of its mystery and of its promise.

Tom Lingard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea. The sea took
him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce aspect, his
loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless heart. Generously
it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his universal love of creation,
his wide indulgence, his contemptuous severity, his straightforward
simplicity of motive and honesty of aim. Having made him what he was,
womanlike, the sea served him humbly and let him bask unharmed in the
sunshine of its terribly uncertain fa