FIRST SCENE
At Sea.
The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its
quickening light in the silence that is never known on land--the silence
before sunrise, in a calm at sea.
Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the
motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing
moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the
eastward sea. By fine gradations, the airy veil of morning thinned in
substance as it rose--thinned, till there dawned through it in the first rays
of sunlight the tall white sails of a Schooner Yacht.
From stem to stern silence possessed the vessel--as silence possessed
the sea.
But one living creature was on deck--the man at the helm, dozing
peaceably with his arm over the useless tiller. Minute by minute the light
grew, and the heat grew with it; and still the helmsman slumbered, the
heavy sails hung noiseless, the quiet water lay sleeping against the vessel\'s
sides. The whole orb of the sun was visible above the water-line, when the
first sound pierced its way through the morning silence. From far off over
the shining white ocean, the cry of a sea-bird reached the yacht on a
sudden out of the last airy circles of the waning mist.
The sleeper at the helm woke; looked up at the idle sails, and yawned
in sympathy with them; looked out at the sea on either side of him, and
shook his head obstinately at the superior obstinacy of the calm.
"Blow, my little breeze!" said the man, whistling the sailor\'s
invocation to the wind softly between his teeth. "Blow, my little breeze!"
"How\'s her head?" cried a bold and brassy voice, hailing the deck from
the cabin staircase.