The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-12-08

making and 9 tall ship standing down to weather the Head? For if there was a menace of weather today, so, too, was there a ship. We seemed to grow conscious Of it by degrees, it drew on So slowly out of the broad, blue, windless south. For hours, in the early noon, it seemed scarcely to move on the mirroring surface of the sea. Yet it did move, growing nearer and larger, it's huge spread of canvas hanging straight as cere- lcloth on the poles, and it's wooden Hanks, by and by, showing the scars and rime of a long voyage but behind it.
 Yet, it seems to me it would have been odd, as our eyes went out in the rare leisure moments of that afternoon and fell upon that presence, worn and strange and solitary within the immense ring of the horizon, if there had not tl ren somewhere among us some dim stirring of memory, and Of wonder Not too vivid, perhaps; not strong enough perhaps to out last the ships disappearance. For at about five o'clock the craft, which had been standing for the Head, wore slowly to port, and lay ing it's course to fetch around the western side of the island, drifted out of our sight beyond the ram part of the bluffs.
 Why it should have been done, no man can say. Why, in the face of coming weather, the ship should have abandoned the clear course around the Head and chosen in stead to hazard the bars and rips that make a good three miles to sea from Pilots Point in the west why this hair-brained maneuver should have been attempted will always remain mystery.
 But at last that ship was gone from our sight, and by so much out of our minds. And this was just as well, perhaps, for our minds had enough to take them up just then with all the things over looked, chairs to fetch, plants to borrow, girls giggling errands- and in the very midst of this | Ieleyenth-hour hub-bub, the sudden advent of storm.
 1 What a catastrophe that was! What a yoiceless vail went up in that hour from all the bureaus and washstands in the length of Urkey l Villagei And how glad I was! With what a poisonous joy did I give thanks at the window for every wind-driven drop that spoiled by so much the wedding of a woman nearly twice my ageI | The lamps on the street were 1 yellow blurs, and the wind was full of little splashings and screenings and blowing of skirts and wraps when I set out alone for Center Church, wishing heartily I might never get there. That I didn't is the only reason this story was ever told. Not many got there that night (of the men, that is), or if they did they were not to stay long, for something bigger than wedding was afoot.
 | The first wind had of it crossed my path at Heman Street, q huge clattering shadow that turned out to be Si Pilots team swinging at a watery gallop toward the back side track, and the wagOn-body full of men. I saw their faces as | they passed under the Heman | Street lamp James Burke, Fred | Burke, Sandy Snow, half a dozen other Surfmen home for the sum- mer from the Point station, and | Captain Cook himself hanging on 1 to Sandy's shoulder as he struggled to get his Sunday blacks wriggled into his old, brown oil cloths. In wink there were gone, and l, forgetting the stained lights of Center Church, was gone after them. Nor was I alone. There were a dozen shades pounding with me; at the COW street we were score. I heard the voices of men couldn't see.
 Aground? Where tor"
 "On the outer bar; south'rd end of the outer bar they tell me-"
 The voices came and went, whipped by the wind.
 What vesseTd you say? Town craft?"
 ''No-that ship"
 What? Not that - that - India ship!"
 ''Yep-that India ship"
 India ship''-"India ship!" I don't know how it seemed to them. but to me the sound of that Iegen- dary name, borne on the gale. seemed strangely like the shadow tof some one coming cast across stage.
 I'll not use space to tell how I got across the island; it would be only the confused tale of an hour that seems but a minute now. lost track somewhere short of Si Pilots place, and wading the san i to the west came out on the beach. without the slightest notion of where I was.
 only know it was a majestic and awful place to be alone; majestic with the weight of wind and the rolling thunder of water, the more awful because I could not see the water itself, save for fhe rare ghost of a tongue licking swiftly up the sand to catch at my feet if 1 did not spring away in time Once a mother of waves struck at me with a huge, dim timber; I lodged it, I can't say how, and floundered on to the south, wondering as peered over my shoulder at the dark if already the ship had broken, and if that thing behind me were one of the ribs come out of her.
 That set me to thinking of all the doomed men near me clinging 2 to slippery things they couldn t see, cursing perhaps. or prayfn 2 their prayers, or perhaps already y I-T T