which Dick had shown him on his landing, had insisted on seeing the others launched and the whole population had stood round ten deep with the little children between the women’s legs, all with their eyes fixed on the pretty sight. The strangest sight—for Kearney the illiterate and ignorant had managed to symbolize the two foundations of civilization, war and trade; and here in little yet in essence lay the ships of Nelson and the ships of Villeneuve: the great wool ships, the Northumberland that had brought Dick’s parents to Palm Tree, the whalers of Martha’s Vineyard and the sandalwood schooners, those first carriers of the disease of the white man.
To Aioma the schooner was the most fascinating. He knew the whaler with her try works and her heavy davits and her squat build; he had seen her before in the whaler whose brutal crew had landed and been driven off. He knew the ship, he had seen its likeness in the Spanish ship of long ago; the frigate intrigued him, but the schooner took his heart—it was not only that he understood her rig and way of sailing better than the rig and way of sailing of the others, it was more than that. Aioma was an instinctive ship lover, and to the lover of ships, the schooner has most appeal, for the schooner is of all things that float the most graceful and the most beautiful; and in contrast to her canvas, the canvas of your square rigged ship becomes dishcloths hung out to dry.
He brooded on this thing over which Kearney had expended his most loving care, and in which nothing
