The Yachts

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses shielding them from the too-heavy blows of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly. Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing, making fast as they turn, lean far over and having caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark. In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace of all that in the mind is feckless, free and naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling for some slightest flaw but fails completely. Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas. Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows. Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside. It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind; the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken, beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.