He is much more, a King with gratitude.

 

*     *     *     *     *

Chisholm Harker, rector of Windlesham, in Berkshire, wrote a pamphlet on English Mediæval Mystical Romances, and died young, leaving a widow and one son, Chisholm, the “Sard” Harker of these pages, who was thirteen at his father’s death.

Mrs. Harker married again two years later. Sard, at his own request, went to sea, sailing first in the barque Venturer, Captain Cary, mentioned a page or two back. He was on his first voyage in her when Don Manuel took refuge in her. She was one of Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s sugar-clippers, then regularly trading to the ports of Santa Barbara. Later in his time Sard followed Captain Cary into the Pathfinder and remained with him in her as third, second and at last as chief mate. He was mate of the Pathfinder and had been for ten years at sea when this tale begins. He was called “Sard” Harker (though seldom to his face) because he was judged to be sardonic. He, too, has been described in a sonnet:

Venturer

Pathfinder

Pathfinder

A lean man, silent, behind triple bars

Of pride, fastidiousness and secret life.

His thought an austere commune with the stars,

His speech a probing with a surgeon’s knife.

His style a chastity whose acid burns

All slack false formlessness in man or thing;

His face a record of the truth man learns

Fighting bare-knuckled Nature in the ring.

His self (unseen until a danger breaks)

Serves as a man, but when the peril comes

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