[Editor: This poem by Barcroft H. Boake was published in The Sun, December 1903.]
The Phantom Moorings.
A Legend of Lavender Bay.
(An unpublished poem by the late Barcroft H. Boake).
On Lavender the moon broke bright — the Bay looked sweetly pretty:
Across its bosom one might see the outline of a city
That hid its dusty face behind a veil of snowy vapor,
Through which, all gilded by the sun, its lofty church-spires taper.
It happened once upon a time — this story I am telling —
Before that Bay’s green slopes were spoilt by many a hideous dwelling,
While yet its waters were as clear as dew-drops in the dawning,
And yet the mackerel flashed their rainbow radiance to the morning;
While in the Bay’s long shallows, where the sweet spring water emptied,
Beneath the moon at turn of tide the black bream might be tempted
With cunning bait of verdant prawns or pleasant paste of salmon —
But now, alas! the wily bream just wink and murmur, “Gammon.”
Upon this lovely autumn morn a pleasure yacht lay waiting
For crew and skipper, such a one of six or eight ton rating;
Her hull was black as Erebus, a golden stripe ran round her,
Her copper flashing as she strove to break the ropes that bound her.
A gay Lothario of a breeze with honey-voiced allurings
Whispered to her to go with him and seek for other moorings,
She bent and swayed, her mainsail set with peak and throat well tautened,
I’ll tell her name, I see no earthly reason why I oughtn’t —
The Ariadne was her name, Bob Collingridge her master,
And like a true-born yachtsman he thought none could travel faster.
But now the dinghy brings them off — the jolly crew and skipper —
And things are shortly shipshape made aboard the little clipper;
The luncheon-basket’s stowed below with many a dainty morsel,
They fling the blue buoy overboard and sheet home jib and focs’l,
And as the vessel gathers way, toward his pleasant villa,
With one hand Robert waves farewell, the other grasps the tiller.
Ah, now she feels it — how she tilts her nose, as if deriding
The slippery little waves that past her shining sides go sliding,
That in an iridescent web of sunlit bubbles lace her,
Then gaily gather in the wake of tumbling foam and chase her;
She goes about to clear the Point — the wind’s upon her quarter —
The straining bowsprit pointing for the blue Pacific water;
Past Kirribilli Point and past the timbered brow of Bradley,
Out ’twixt those two great portals where the ocean thunders madly.
At four o’clock one might have seen the Ariadne lying
Like some great weary bird whose wings took rest from endless flying;
The sun had given to the wind a mighty sleeping potion,
And nought but gentle slumber stirred the bosom of the ocean;
But suddenly Bob Collingridge cried out, “I see a flurry
Out in the sky that means a storm; my lads, we’d better hurry!
Two reefs at least is what we want, and house the topmast quickly;
I see the black nor’-easter and his white tops gathering quickly.”
They snugged the Ariadne down, and when the storm descended,
With half her feathers clipped she flew t’ward home with wings extended;
The gale bore furious surges down that threatened to surmount her —
She sped too fast, they broke and lost themselves beneath her counter.
Quoth Bob, “Another reef won’t hurt; the weather getting worse is!”
But changed his tone. “No, no!” he cried, and rapped a string of curses.
They thought their craft had sailed alone, but lo! they saw another —
A tiny brown-winged fishing-boat, wrapped in a snowy smother —
Driving toward them through the gale, proving herself no laggard;
Though not a reef was in her sail, she never even staggered.
They stared to see her skim those waves by angry foam flakes dotted,
Full in the white teeth of the storm and ne’er a reef-point knotted.
“Stand by, my lads!” quoth Collingridge, “we’ll see what she is made of;
I never saw the fishing-boat that I was e’er afraid of.”
The Ariadne hauled her wind, with sheet and runner tightened,
And, turning eastward, beat her way out where the billows whitened.
“Flatten that jib! — that’s better; now we’ll try that stranger’s paces
Against this dainty heroine of a dozen hard-fought races.”
The great white mainsail bellied out, with every seam set straining;
The salt wind piped its loudest, yet the stranger still kept gaining;
The skipper scowled, and looked, and scowled, he coaxed her and he nursed her —
’Twas no avail, the stranger gained, and then he roundly cursed her.
“Shake out a reef!” he roared: “I’d die of shame to let him beat me,
Look at him coolly bearing down as if he meant to greet me!”
But not a man among them stirred to execute his order;
The Ariadne sped along with mutiny aboard her.
“I’m skipper here,” said Bob; “and if you disobey my wishes,
I’ll broach her to, and send us all below to feed the fishes.”
They sprang to do his order, yet with faces pale and troubled,
They knew the loosing of a reef would mean the danger doubled;
And still the stranger gained apace, a weather-beaten carvel,
While how that skipper hugged the wind must ever be a marvel.
Perched on the gun’le there he sat, the only man aboard her,
Beneath whose sou’-wester shot two rays in scorching order;
He nodded grimly up at Bob, but never said the least word;
Bob hailed and asked his course and then he mutely pointed eastward.
The yacht with one reef down had all her work to make good weather,
Yet that strange vessel glided by as lightly as a feather;
She passed — and with a thrill that bound their souls in icy fetters,
They read the statement on her stern in great black shining letters
(For which no plea might be advanced, not by the man’s best wisher).
The statement ran thus: “DAVY JONES OF DEEPSEA, LICENSED FISHER.”
Bob Collingridge but laughed aloud and pressed the tiller lightly,
Although to leeward of his hatch the froth was foaming whitely.
“I fear no fisherman!” he cried, “however you may call him;
Shake out another reef, my lads, and soon we’ll overhaul him;
Run up the topmast, Curly Jim, and set the big jib header,
Our craft shall never have to say a fisherman has led her.”
They did as they were bid; none dared to cross their bold commander,
The Ariadne strained and wondered where he meant to land her.
The ensign at her peak streams out, wet with the sea’s salt kisses,
And fiercely past her supple boom the flying torrent hisses;
She leans until her smooth black side is buried past the gun’le,
As if athwart the great green wall she strove to drive a tunnel.
Up in the crosstrees Curly Jim setting that sail was busy,
The water swirling down below, poor fellow, made him dizzy;
The Ariadne staggered as a mighty sea wave caught her —
A cry! — a splash! — and Curly Jim was struggling in the water.
“’Bout ship! ’bout ship!” cried all the crew, “for Curly Jim afloat is”;
The skipper threw a glance behind, but took no other notice.
“’Bout ship! Bob Collingridge!” they cried, “for Curly Jim is drowning”;
He only curled his sombre brow into a deeper frowning.
“Then let him drown,” he shouted, “for I stop this boat for no man;
The Ariadne’s work’s cut out to beat this horrid foeman.”
Again they heard his voice ring high above the tempest’s bellow —
“I’ll drive her to the gates of Hell before I leave that fellow.”
They sped along, the safety spray from truck to keelson dripping,
Poor Curly Jim shrieked wildly as he fell his strength fast slipping.
“God curse you, Robert Collingridge! God curse you now for ever,
And send that you may reach the Bay, but cast your anchor — never!
And may the Ariadne roam as long as time endureth,
And ever seek, but never find, that buoy to which she mooreth.”
The winds caught up the words and bore them round the yacht to mock her,
As Jim threw up his hands and sank to “Davy Jones’s locker.”
And then a great black cloud swept down and blotted out the ocean,
The wind ceased suddenly, the waves dropped into oily motion;
The timbers creaked in cadence to the Ariadne’s rolling,
While to and fro the ensign swept, for poor Jim’s office tolling.
The fisherman had disappeared, and yet for long time after
Their ears re-echoed to the mocking sound of ghostly laughter.
What space of time they lay in that most awful calm I know not,
Not time for Robert to repent of his great sin — I trow not:
He lay on deck with sullen eyes out through the darkness staring,
When suddenly athwart the gloom a mighty light shot glaring —
A great white phosphorescent arm upon the water leaning,
A great white finger pointing at his heart with awful meaning.
No man might fathom whence it came, this mighty silver cable,
This tongue of flame that seemed to say — “Where is thy brother Abel?”
They sprang upon their feet with fear, and rested wondering eyes on
That fearsome gleam, that slowly circled round the dark horizon.
“I fear no light,” quoth Collingridge, “tho’ ’twere the light of Sheol;
A breeze is springing up, my lads, we’ll soon see if it’s real.”
They bore away, when Robert cried, “The mystery’s not past solving,
If I’m not much mistaken, ’tis the South Head light revolving.”
“Not so,” they cried, “for in this light that one would pale and weaken” —
(In their long absence men had raised a strange electric beacon).
“I said as much,” quoth Collingridge, as suddenly the gloom in
They saw the mighty shadows of the North and South Heads looming.
But cut his triumph short, and seemed with some strange fear to wrestle
As that bright lighthouse eye beamed down upon the little vessel.
They looked — and lo! the mainsail that had spread aloft so whitely,
With great black dots of mildew now was rendered most unsightly;
Gone was the ensign — all except the Jack within its corner,
Than that once lovely yacht no ancient hulk could look forlorner.
The planking of her deck gaped wide, the gilded name was shattered,
The standing rigging once so trim was rotting, frayed and tattered,
While through a great rent in her jib the gentle breeze went singing,
And on her battered sides great strings of slimy weed were clinging.
But what weird cry was that which woke the seagulls from their dozing?
The cry of men upon whose hearts a dread despair was closing —
A fearful sound, that echoed far o’er broken bar and breaker —
The cry of men who beat their breasts and called upon their Maker.
Small wonder — for they saw themselves grown wrinkled and white-headed,
With haggard faces and wild eyes in sockets deep embedded;
They who in manhood’s prime had left their homes, now strangely altered
By years and years, with failing limbs that on the grave-brink faltered,
Looked each one at his comrade, changed in such an awful fashion,
And knew that fearsome race had lasted half a generation.
But Collingridge sat silent, never caring, never fearing,
Over the silver ripples of the moonlit harbor steering,
Nor did he seem to dread or note the terrifying changes
That Time had parcelled out among those bay-indented ranges.
The lordly homes that tier on tier rose ghostly and quiescent
In moonlight beauty looming over Rose Bay’s gleaming crescent;
On, on toward the City, and he never moved a feature
Although a ferry-boat bore down like some great phantom creature,
With lurid eyes and labored breath, with black smoke backward wreathing,
A track of glittering water in her rearward pathway seething.
Then from the ocean at their back the favoring breeze came chilly,
And swept them on past Pinchgut, on by frowning Kirribilli.
No word said Collingridge, but stared straight in the one direction,
Across the waters sparkling with electrical reflection;
No word he said when city bells struck out the midnight hour,
Until o’er silent Lavender he saw the poplars tower —
The two tall poplar trees that marked his home, and then the order
Rang sharp and clear, “Stand by, my lads, to get the buoy aboard her!”
Down came the foresail from its place, with little hesitation,
While some of them took in the jib, another took his station;
Down on the supple bobstay stept, to catch the ring preparing —
The blue buoy melted! — in its place a dead white face lay staring,
The awful face of Curly Jim, with features grim and ghastly,
Print with the fear of sudden death as they had seen it lastly.
Ah, what a cry it was that woke the echoes’ weird repeating
As that drowned man rose up — toward his comrades giving greeting.
“What fools ye be,” quoth Collingridge; “here, one of you change places;
Come aft, give me the boat-hook for I fear no dead men’s faces.”
Three times they brought the vessel up, three times the buoy evaded
The skipper’s grasp, three times that face rose mockingly, then faded.
“Now may the devil take his soul,” quoth Bob; “get up the anchor
And heave it overboard, for sight of home and wife I hanker.”
But at the rattle of the chain a wind made sudden sally
Upon the yacht, and drove her out along the glimmering valley,
Nor could they turn her course, it drove them backward, willy-nilly,
Past Milson’s Point and down the stream past frowning Kirribilli,
By Pinchgut, by Cremorne, and past the timbered brow of Bradley,
Far out beyond those portals where the ocean thunders madly.
My friends, if you should care to test the truth of what I’m telling,
Go seek that Bay where two tall poplars mark that skipper’s dwelling;
Sit down beside that bathing-house, a lonely vigil keeping,
And should you wait there long enough, you’ll see that yacht come creeping
Abreast of you, then, as you hear that awful cry go pealing,
You’ll probably experience a most unpleasant feeling;
But bear it bravely — ’tis a proof my story’s not a fable,
And then you’ll very likely hear the rattle of a cable,
But at the sound an awful wind will suddenly make sally,
And drive her back — a certain proof that truth and I keep tally;
You’ll then be sure that Curly Jim’s fell curse is aye enduring,
And that the Ariadne still is searching for her mooring.
Source:
The Sun (NSW?), [?] December 1903 (Christmas Number)
Also published in:
Barcroft Boake, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (2nd edition), London (England): Angus & Robertson, 1913, pp. 140-155 [this poem was not included in the 1st edition]
Editor’s notes:
The text of this poem was sourced from a newspaper cutting included in a working scrapbook which belonged to A. G. Stephens; the scrapbook is available online from the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. The cutting is headed “The Sub Christmas Number, 1903”; however, there were a number of newspaper which were called the Sun; a matching copy has not (as yet) been located in the Trove online collection of historical newspapers; therefore the place of publication, date, and page number of the newspaper cutting are yet to be discovered.
See: “Volume 099: Angus & Robertson manuscripts by A.G. Stephens – Barcroft Boake : A Memoir, 1903-1913”, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales [the poem is on the scrapbook pages numbered 34-38]
In the second edition of Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (1913), the subtitle given to this poem is “A Legend of Lavender Bay, Sydney” (see p. 140). There are various differences between the versions of the poem published in the newspaper in 1903 and in the book in 1913. It is assumed that A. G. Stephens, the book’s editor, made a number of changes to the poem when he inserted it into the 1913 edition, as he has a reputation for changing various elements in poems submitted for publication.
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