ite drunk It stood to reason
they all had a glass or two then, except the man at the wheel; and
towards evening the man at the wheel could bear it no longer, and
seems to have had his glass like all the rest, for the ship's course
wobbled a bit and made a circle or two. Then all of a sudden she went
off south by east under full canvas till midnight, and never altered
her course. And at midnight she came to the wide wet courts of the
Temple in the Sea.

People who think that Mr. Smiles is drunk often make a great mistake.
And people are not the only ones that have made that mistake. Once a
ship made it, and a lot of ships. It's a mistake to think that old
Bill Smiles is drunk just because he can't move.

Midnight and moonlight and the Temple in the Sea Bill Smiles clearly
remembers, and all the derelicts in the world were there, the old
abandoned ships. The figureheads were nodding to themselves and
blinking at the image. The image was a woman of white marble on a
pedestal in the outer court of the Temple of the Sea: she was clearly
the love of all the man-deserted ships, or the goddess to whom they
prayed their heathen prayers. And as Bill Smiles was watching them,
the lips of the figureheads moved; they all began to pray. But all at
once their lips were closed with a snap when they saw that there were
men on the Sea-Fancy. They all came crowding up and nodded and nodded
and nodded to see if all were drunk, and that's when they made their
mistake about old Bill Smiles, although he couldn't move. They would
have given up the treasuries of the gulfs sooner than let men hear the
prayers they said or guess their love for the goddess. It is the
intimate secret of the sea.

The sailor paused. And, in my eagerness to hear what lyrical or
blasphemous thing those figureheads prayed by moonlight at midnight in
the sea to the woman of marble who was a goddess to ships, I pressed
on the sailor more of my Gorgondy wine that the gnomes so wickedly
brew.

I should never have done it; but there he was sitting silent while the
secret was almost mine. He took it moodily and drank a glass; and with
the other glasses that he had had he fell a prey to the villainy of
the gnomes who brew this unbridled wine to no good end. His body
leaned forward slowly, then fell on to the table, his face being
sideways and full of a wicked smile, and, saying very clearly the one
word, "Hell," he became silent for ever with the secret he had from
the