for a moment which of us is meant. They drink my health, too, on her
birthday, which is the fourteenth of May; and you know King Solomon's
verse for the fourteenth--'She is like the merchants' ships, she
bringeth her food from afar.' This is what I have done while she was
growing; for King Solomon wrote it for a wife, of course. But now I
shall yield up my trust, for when I return she is to be married. She
shall bind that verse upon her with a coral necklace I carry for my
gift, and it shall dance on her white throat when her husband leads her
out to open the wedding-ball."

"Since you are so fond of children," said the _Touch-me-not_, "tell me,
what shall we do for the one I have on my deck? He is the small boy who
signalled Christmas to us from the garden above; and he dreams of
nothing but the sea, though his parents wish him to stick to his books
and go to college."

The Dane did not answer for a moment. She was considering. "Wherever
he goes," she said at length, "and whatever he does, he will find that
to serve much is to renounce much. Let us show him that what is
renounced may yet come back in beautiful thoughts."

And it seemed to the boy that, as she ceased, a star dropped out of the
sky and poised itself above the fir-tree on her maintopmast; and that
the bare mast beneath it put forth branches, while upon every branch, as
it spread, a globe of fire dropped from the star, until a gigantic
Christmas-tree soared from the deck away up to heaven. In the blaze of
it the boy saw the miracle run from ship to ship--the timber bursting
into leaf with the song of birds and the scent of tropical plants.
Across the avenue of teak which had been the _Nubian's_ bulwarks he saw
the Dutchman's galley, now a summer-house set in parterres of tulips.