David was a handsome fellow, with the blood of a seafaring
race in his veins.
He had been a sailor, like his father and grandfather before him;
but, when he married Isabella, she induced him to give up the sea
and settle down with her on a snug farm her father had left her.
Isabella liked farming, and loved her fertile acres and opulent
orchards. She abhorred the sea and all that pertained to it,
less from any dread of its dangers than from an inbred conviction
that sailors were "low" in the social scale--a species of
necessary vagabonds. In her eyes there was a taint of disgrace
in such a calling. David must be transformed into a respectable,
home-abiding tiller of broad lands.
For five years all went well enough. If, at times, David's
longing for the sea troubled him, he stifled it, and listened not
to its luring voice. He and Isabella were very happy; the only
drawback to their happiness lay in the regretted fact that they
were childless.
Then, in the sixth year, came a crisis and a change. Captain
Barrett, an old crony of David's, wanted him to go with him on a
voyage as mate. At the suggestion all David's long-repressed
craving for the wide blue wastes of the ocean, and the wind
whistling through the spars with the salt foam in its breath,
broke forth with a passion all the more intense for that very
repression. He must go on that voyage with James Barrett--he
MUST! That over, he would be contented again; but go he must.
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