You are here
قراءة كتاب Walking Shadows
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
WALKING SHADOWS
SEA TALES AND OTHERS
BY ALFRED NOYES
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1918, by
Alfred Noyes
Copyright, 1918, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| Prelude | xi | |
| I. | The Light-house | 1 |
| II. | Uncle Hyacinth | 28 |
| III. | The Creative Impulse | 82 |
| IV. | The Man from Buffalo | 117 |
| V. | The Lusitania Waits | 138 |
| VI. | The Log of the Evening Star | 151 |
| VII. | Goblin Peaches | 177 |
| VIII. | May Margaret | 205 |
| IX. | Marooned | 249 |
| X. | The Garden on the Cliff | 281 |
| XI. | The Hand of the Master | 292 |
WALKING SHADOWS
Prelude
Unreckoned, undescried,
Breaking no hearts but two or three that loved them;
Of multitudes that gave
Their memories to the grave,
And the unrevealing seas of night removed them;
Who smile at all our boasts
And are not blazed on any scroll of glory;
Mere out-posts in the night,
Mere keepers of the light,
Where history stops, let shadows weave a story.
That history's pomp and show
Are shadows of a shadow, gilt and painted.
They see the accepted lie
In robes of state go by.
They see the prophet stoned, the trickster sainted.
To truths that they discern
Beyond the ordered "facts" that fame would cherish.
They walk awhile with dreams,
They follow flying gleams
And lonely lights at sea that pass and perish.
Not all without remede
Of clean-edged mirth. Our Rosalie of laughter,
The bayonet of a jest,
May pierce the devil's breast,
And give us room and time for grief, here-after.
Or kneel, or dance awhile,
Fantastic shades, by wandering fires begotten;
Remembrancers of themes
That dawn may mock as dreams.
Then let them sleep, at dawn, with the forgotten.
WALKING SHADOWS
I
THE LIGHT-HOUSE
The position of a light-house keeper, in a sea infested by submarines, is a peculiar one; but Peter Ramsay, keeper of the Hatchets' Light, had reasons for feeling that his lonely tower, six miles from the mainland, was the happiest habitation in the world.
At five o'clock, on a gusty October afternoon, of the year 1916, Peter had just finished his tea and settled down, with a pipe and the last number of the British Weekly, for five minutes' reading, before he turned to the secret of his happiness again. Precisely at this moment, the Commander of the U-99, three miles away to the north, after making sure through his periscope that there were no patrol boats in the vicinity, rose to the surface, and began to look for the Hatchets'. He, too, had reasons for wishing to get inside the light-house, if only for half an hour. It was possible only by trickery; but he thought it might be done under cover of darkness, and he was about to reconnoiter.
When he first emerged, he had some difficulty in descrying his goal across that confused sea. His eye was guided by a patch of foam, larger than the ordinary run of white-caps, and glittering in the evening sun like a black-thorn blossom. As the sky brightened behind it, he saw, rising upright, like the single slim pistil of those rough white petals, the faint shaft of the light-house itself.
He stole nearer, till these pretty fancies were swallowed up in the savagery of the place. It greeted him with a deep muffled roar as of a hundred sea-lions, and the air grew colder with its thin mists of spray. The black thorns