Hued as a peacock's plumage, wide unfurled, The sea dreams, smiling. Far off, toylike, frail A boat drifts to the blue edge of the world, The brilliant sunlight glinting from it's sail. An idle cruiser, sinister and grey, Drifts, out of tune with sunlight and with dreams, While, on the city-wall, the rainbow-spray Scatters to crystal, shot with opal gleams. The shore curves tender as a clasping arm-- Like cardboard structures from a clever hand, Bright in the sun, and touched with old-world charm, Unreal, the ragged lines of houses stand. Dim with the Past, a fortress close-guards yet A city whose once-fettered feet are free, To wear, serene as some white-limbed coquette, The gold-and-sapphire anklet of the Sea. 2 MORRO CASTLE An old fortress, wrapped in magic sleep, The city's crouching watchdog, fronts the sea, And locks stone lips on tales of dungeon-keep; On legends of dead terrors, buried deep; And gives no hint of once-screamed, strangled plea, Choked to swift silence in the torture cell, In ages dark with bloody sweat of pain.... Ah! if the Morro ghosts could walk again, What whispered horror could those bruised throats tell, Wrung by the cruel, long hands of Ancient Spain! I gave the verses to Wright, after luncheon,--all of them. He could do with them as he liked, I said. Revise, correct, re-group. I was tired of singing songs, but I did not tell him that. In my heart I thought I would be glad to have my verses, bound and shut in a little book. They would remind me of Cuba, and of other things, when I was too old, too armoured by time, to feel the hurt of remembering. I would keep my Diary, too, against that distant day. Time, I had read, heals all. It was pleasant to think that sometime the ache in my breast would be stilled. But I thought perhaps I would miss it, it would grow to be part of me after a while-- Mercedes, looking in on me from the flowers screening the verandah where I sat, asked coaxingly, "Coming walking with us, Mavis!" "Us?" I inquired. "Wright, and Billy, and me." I shook my hand. "I think not," I answered. "I have some letters to write." "Billy said you wouldn't come," said she, pouting. "Did he?" For a moment I was inclined to reconsider, but the delight of proving my husband wrong would not have atoned for an hour of his society. And well I knew that Wright and Mercedes would, eventually, wander off or get surprisingly lost, or accomplish one of the fifty odd things which they managed so ingenuously, and which would rid them of even the most friendly chaperonage. Mercedes waited. "Bill is right," I said, "as always. I think I'll not go, Mercedes, if you and Wright don't mind."