Ballads of Lost Haven

Book Excerpt: ...led steersman sails with that Norland gloom; The Snowflake in the offing is neck and neck with doom. Ha, ha, my saucy cruiser, crowd up your helm and run!There'll be a merrymaking to-morrow in the sun.A cloud of straining canvas, a roar of breaking foam, The Snowflake and the sea-drift are racing in for home. Her heart is dancing shoreward, but silently and paleThe swift relentless phantom is hungering on her trail. They scour and fly together, until across the roarHe signals for a pilot--and Death puts out from shore.A moment Malyn's window is gleaming in the lee, And then--the ghost of wreckage upon the iron sea.Ah, Malyn, lay your forehead upon your folded arm, And hear the grim marauder shake out the reefs of storm! Loud laughs the surly Skipper to feel the fog drive in, Because a blue-eyed sailor shall wed his kith and kin, And the red dawn discover a rover spent for breathAmong the merrymakers who fondle him to death.And all the snowy sisters