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Updated: June 7, 2025
Lying flat on Tintageu, chin on fist, I would watch the white-sailed ships pushing eagerly to that wonderful outer world and long to be on them. There were great ships carrying wine and brandy to the West Indies, where the people were all black, and the most wonderful plants grew, and the palm trees. And to Canada and Newfoundland, where the great icebergs came down through the mist.
Not even the wild new heifer, which had gored Jimmy Kinsella, if such a creature existed at all, would have had energy to do much. A dog, which ought perhaps to have been barking at the cattle, lay prostrate under the shadow afforded by a grassy bank. A flock of white terns floated motionless a few yards from the Tortoise, looking like a miniature fleet of graceful, white-sailed pleasure boats.
The rich lawn, decked with field flowers of many a hue, stretched away towards the river, upon whose calm surface the white-sailed lugger scarce seemed to move; the sounds of a well-known Irish air came, softened by distance, as some poor fisherman sat mending his net upon the bank, and the laugh of children floated on the breeze. Yes, they were happy.
When the proposition had first been made I had felt a passing uncomfortableness as to the lawfulness of such an expedition without the distinct sanction of the head master; but the more I gazed on the bay, and the more Hall talked in his enthusiastic manner of the delights of a cruise, and the longer I watched the fairy-like progress of the little white-sailed fishing-boat, the less I thought of anything but the pleasure which the scheme offered.
The main feature of the view, however a sort of narrow Japanese panel where childish eyes perceived everything as on a flat surface was that it continued upwards: first, a lot of water, ripped and curled by busily scurrying steam launches and tugs, streaked by plodding rowboats, and, at rare times, adorned by a white-sailed yacht; then, still higher up, a shore with many trees that drew the soul magnetically by their summer verdure; and, finally, a brightly red, toylike fort, crowned by a small embattled tower flying the blue and yellow Swedish flag at the top.
The ferryboats from Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and Sausalito are plying their ceaseless traffic from mole to mole. White-sailed ships from foreign countries, outward bound with the tide, conveyed by little bustling tugs, look like monster white-winged gulls; and somber-hued gunboats, their portholes bristling with deadly engines of war, strain at their cables.
Moreover, if the worst came to the worst, there would be some compensation in the fact of Miss White changing her name for that of Lady Macleod. Just as quickly she changed her mood on the present occasion. She was looking again far over the darkly blue and ruffled seas toward the white-sailed yacht. "He must have gone away in the dark to get that boat for us," said she, musingly.
Perhaps it was a worn-out virtue, left to the bas-peuple to the vulgar and to animals? Progress might have attained this result no doubt it had. I sighed wearily, and threw myself clown in an arm-chair near the window, and watched the white-sailed boats skimming like flecks of silver across the blue-green water.
Behind the returning girls there rocked the white-sailed ship, as if she were all alive with eagerness for her anchors to be heaved.
But the interesting coincidence, giving a peculiar point to it all, was that the three o'clock train from town was due within the half-hour, and her present course lay dead across the line of the street from the station. Travel-worn young men; desolate Beach; chagrin at coming; and then, presto, upon the jaded vision: blue, sunny water, white-sailed boat, beautiful nymph.
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