As he stood there stunned and with his heart pounding, the sight before him seemed almost Biblical, like the love of Ruth and Boaz, an expression of God’s will set in one of the great scenes of holy writ.4 Words from the ‘Song of Songs’ began to form in his mind and the cries of passion, the yearning of the flesh, the fierce, burning ardour of that most tender of poems returned to him.

And he said to himself, ‘Perhaps God has created this sort of night in order to imbue the love of man with something of the ideal.’ He retreated as the two, entwined, approached ever closer. And though she was his niece he now wondered whether he could disobey the will of God. How could God disapprove of love since he surrounded it with such obvious splendour? Distraught and almost ashamed, he disappeared quickly from sight, as if trespassing in a temple where he had no right to be.

AT SEA

The following lines appeared in several recent newspaper reports:

Boulogne-sur-Mer, 22 January.
We are informed that:
A further tragedy has been added to the many trials already suffered over the past two years by our coastal population. A fishing vessel under the command of skipper Javel, while attempting to reach port, was blown westward on to the breakwater rocks of the jetty and wrecked. Despite efforts on the part of lifeboatmen, and the use of projectile life-lines, four men and one boy lost their lives. Foul weather persists and further incidents are expected.

I wonder who this man Javel is and if he could perhaps be the brother of a one-armed man I know. If he’s the man I think he is, this poor fellow crushed by the waves and battered to death by the shattered remains of his own ship was involved eighteen years ago in another of those stark, terrifying dramas which happen so often at sea.

At that time, Javel the elder was skipper of a trawler, which is the best kind of fishing boat in the world. Built to withstand all kinds of weather, her round hull bobs up and down on the waves like a cork. Out winter and summer and whipped this way and that by the stiff, salt winds of the Channel, she works the sea tirelessly. Under sail, she carries on one side of the hull an enormous net which rakes the bottom of the ocean and gathers up, among other things, all kinds of creatures asleep on the rocks of the deep – enormous hook-clawed crabs, moustachioed lobsters, and flatfish lying peacefully on the surface of the sand.