“So?” answered the stately gentleman. “Ah, women, women, never one of you yet but dreaded the sea!--Tell me, Henry: is it that they know the sea is more powerful than they? Do they know the dream that we, we others, dream--the discontent that lies in all achievement, the urge?... And not the youth only; the old man, too, is drawn from the chimney-corner, as I am drawn--as I must go even now with the turn of the tide.--Well, I had my choice, and twice or thrice I have warmed my hands at a fire that glows on no husband’s hearth. Perhaps I shall do so once more, and so die content. For marrying some, but we others are for the sea, the dream, the unrest....” He mused, and Jessie wondered if the face of a saint could be more beautiful than that on which her eyes were fixed. “Well, that is my destiny, not another’s,” he resumed by and by.--“My child, have they told you why the acorn is set in the ground, and tended and fostered till it becomes a tree, and then dies, as we all die, to a nobler service?” Jessie did not reply, not rightly understanding him; and the white-haired commander, putting his fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat, drew out two acorns. He considered them as they lay in the palm of his hand. “Heart o’ the oak, that holds it all for us, for us others--the rest we scorned in our youth, the boundless sea, the endeavour that must be its own reward, the pleasantness of life foregone.... It may be that we chose ignorantly, blindly; perhaps we have doubted since, doubted but it had been better to choose the shelter of the rafters and the woman at our side and the little ones ... no matter. Twice or thrice, and once more under God’s pleasure.... Girl, I come ashore but thrice in ten years, and there are hardly ten of years now remaining to me. For thirty years I have carried acorns in my pocket, and have planted them when opportunity came, and have seen tall oaks of my own planting. And your woodsmen come in the season and cut them down, and they are bolted together to be the houses of some of us--our hearths, homes, lodging, we others who have chosen it so.... Think of it when you see your lover set his hand to the axe, and when you feel his arms about you in the darkness, too.... You, too, have your choice; go--nay, stay.--You shall see the last of me, Henry: the gig is waiting now.--Plant me these last acorns, girl; heart o’ the oak, heart o’ the oak....” * * * * * The tide rustled and talked as it receded swiftly down the river channel, and here and there one of the stakes that marked out the waterway could be distinguished dimly in the darkness. The craft in the harbour began to heel over as the water left them. The tide washed and slapped against hulls and pebbles and wooden groynes and stone angles; and at the top of the breakwater half a dozen lanterns showed a group of dark figures that looked seaward.