Achates Writes a Ballade of Double Refrain

The golden geese of day had flown back to the Master's treasure house;
and ah! the loneliness of that first night at sea!--the low whistling
song of the icy winds among the shrouds; the cold repellent color tones
which lay thinly across the west, pressing upon the ragged, heaving
horizon; the splendor and intense brilliancy of the million stars; the
vast imposing circle of untamed water, the purple of its flowing
mountains and the velvet blackness of its sweeping valleys; the
monotonous seething round the boring prow and the sad gurgle of the
speeding wake; the weird canvas shadows rearing heavenward; and above
all, that silence which engulfs all human noises simply by its
immensity! More than one stout heart grew doubtful and troubled under
the weight of this mystery.

Even the Iroquois Indian, born without fear, stoic, indifferent to
physical pain, even he wrapped his blanket closer about his head, held
his pipe pendent in nerveless fingers, and softly chanted an appeal to
the Okies of his forebears, forgetting the God of the black-robed
fathers in his fear of never again seeing the peaceful hills and
valleys of Onondaga or tasting the sweet waters of familiar springs.
For here was evil water, of which no man might drink to quench his
thirst; there were no firebrands to throw into the face of the North
Wind; there was no trail, to follow or to retrace. O for his mat by
the fire in the Long House, with the young braves and old warriors
sprawling around, recounting the victories of the hunt!