An orange wonder dimly guessed,
From darkness where the cuttles rest,
Moored o'er the darker deeps that hide
The blind white Sea-snake and his bride
Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships
Let down through darkness to their lips.
_The Palms_.

Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always a mason; but
once a journalist, always and for ever a journalist.

There were three of us, all newspaper men, the only passengers on a
little tramp steamer that ran where her owners told her to go. She
had once been in the Bilbao iron ore business, had been lent to the
Spanish Government for service at Manilla; and was ending her days in
the Cape Town coolie-trade, with occasional trips to Madagascar and
even as far as England. We found her going to Southampton in ballast,
and shipped in her because the fares were nominal. There was Keller,
of an American paper, on his way back to the States from palace
executions in Madagascar; there was a burly half-Dutchman, called
Zuyland, who owned and edited a paper up country near Johannesburg;
and there was myself, who had solemnly put away all journalism,
vowing to forget that I had ever known the difference between an
imprint and a stereo advertisement.

Ten minutes after Keller spoke to me, as the _Rathmines_ cleared Cape
Town, I had forgotten the aloofness I desired to feign, and was in
heated discussion on the immorality of expanding telegrams beyond a
certain fixed point. Then Zuyland came out of his cabin, and we were
all at home instantly, because we were men of the same profession