THE BRANCH OF STRANGE BERRIES. (An Old Man Tells a Story to Some Boys.)

Black tunnels grooved the sea Into caves of night; And the furrowed walls of foam Were jagged chrysolite. No star stayed to chart the way— We shuddered, lurching on boiling spray In piteous plight of swinging stay And black sails torn to flapping rags, Blowing in knots and bellying bags. I could not sleep; I walked with the salt Caking in rifts on my face, And I heard my men up in the bows Cursing our dreary case. They ground their bitter words in their jaws As we reeled in the furred seas’ tigress paws. Paladin came with his eyes of omen, His loose mouth hanging dry: “Senor,” he said, “We men leave women—” He turned and sneered at the sky— “Maybe your love is the love of the ghost That shrieks your name from a rock-cursed coast, But we know there’s no land like the land thou dreamest— No land like thy boyish fancy deemest.... “Man, if thou knowest the way, turn back Over the lost and surging track. The men are mad for the food they lack, Two ships are lost, the water-skins sag; Scurvy’s aboard, the torn sails drag.... St. Mary! Thou knowest there is no land Offers food nor place for our starving band; Thou and thy dupes our lives have hurled White bones on the reef of a Western World. With your jewel-bought quadrants and King-got-gold Our homes and kith and kin ye have sold....” Paladin whined: “Turn back, turn back Over the lost and tossing track; Up from this dreaming, silly and slack.” I turned on him, I shook my head, Through burned and bleeding lips I said: “Sail on....” “Sail on,” I said. (Though it seemed to me I spoke from the dead), “Sail on—Sail on,” I said. Then came all terrible wolves of that crew, Staring at me—half dead, they knew; Yet maddened because my words were few. The blood was gone from their hanging skins, The rags hung dank on their horny shins; They mouthed and muttered: “His eyes roll wild, He babbles now like a peevish child. O shame, thou madman, thou dangerous Mind, That dreams of a country we do not find; While we with the blazing sea go blind.... Art minded to sail till the last one’s dead ...?” “Sail on.... Sail on....” I said. All night we climbed those seas that mounted, Towering to skies that nightly counted The empty coin of the foreign stars; We saw foam rips on the rock-reefed bars, The sea shuttles kept up their ghastly heaving On looms of white their black cloth weaving, And I thought that they wove me a winding sheet That slowly wrapped me from head to feet.... Day after day the salt spray caked On my sunken eyes that burned and ached, And the curses fell as my body fell; I lay slant like a corpse on the all-day swell, (Were it day or night, I could not tell), But they called for my blood—yea, their knives were keen For the blood of a man, whose fault, I ween Was: “He sailed for a country he had not seen.” Day by day muttered hate; thick slime Oozing from mouths that judged my crime, Till they told me: “You die!” And set the time. I crawled to the bow and looked out ahead For the time was short and the land I dreamed Hidden, but near, me-seemed. And then—Jesu!—atop one foaming wave The Miracle rode—the Carvéd Stick, Knobby and rough, its black bark brave Notched with rough taboo words and signs Of living beings—strange words and lines.... And then—O Mother of God! it sailed— The branch of strange berries, its long bough trailed On a wave that broke where the sunlight paled. Red toppling balls on the white sea-crest That heaved it up from the shining West, And bore it straight to my sobbing breast. The Branch of Strange Berries sailed forth to me For the sign of Land and fecundity! Shuddering, staggering as one dead, I heard them.... “Land.... Land.... Land....” they said. “Land!” they shrieked and again they shrieked; The wallowing caravel’s timbers creaked And I sank down on the deck quite dumb, For my answering miracle had come. The unbelievable Land was there; It slowly loomed on the atmosphere. Oh, the dim, dark, strange, unspeakable shore, Fringed out on the blue ...! Then I heard them roar, “San Salvador.... San Salvador ...!” They tossed up their arms, they leaped on the deck, Black faces grinned through crusted fleck; Bloody-bearded eye and skeleton hand Pointed me.... “Senor.... Senor.... Land!” Water they brought in an olive wood cup— The last roiled drops; to my feet they crept, And laughed and kissed me, and raved and wept, And my fame they sang (I, who had been Believer in things I had not seen). Judge of me, God, that I never quailed, But that as through hell and horror we sailed, “Sail on.... Sail on....” I said. Judge of me, God, who, when I cried For sign, sent the carved stick overside, And the Branch of Strange Berries that rode the tide. And pardon my sins, for I was, I ween, True to the Country I had not seen.... Then, Jesu ... judge of those whose speed To those new fair shores was confident greed, (Now that of courage there was no need); Who called me “Master” and called me “Friend,” When the bitter doubting was at an end.... Pity all men whose fate has been— “They steer for a Country they have not seen!”