Part 8

No—this was the Viking’s own ship—the most priceless possession that he had. Can you not see it plainly, with sails set, speeding forth upon its last voyage—the last voyage for both of them? And then, as the lapping, leaping flames catch hold upon the bellied canvas, I can see her settling down in the swinging cradle of the waves. I can see the dense column of smoke mingling with and veiling the tongues of orange flame, until she becomes like a little Altar set out upon a vast sea, offering up its sacrifice of a human soul to the ever-implacable gods.

Now every time you burn a ship’s log you attend a Viking’s burial. In those flames of green and gold, of orange, purple and blue, there is to be found, if you will use but the eyes for it, all the romance, all the spirit and colour of that majestic human sacrifice—the burial of a Viking lord. As you sit through the long evenings, while the rain is beating in sudden, whipping gusts upon the streaming window pane and the drops fall spitting and hissing down the chimney into the fire below, then the burning of a ship’s log is company enough for any one. With every spurt of flame as the tar oozes out from the sodden wood, and the water, still clinging in the tenacious timber, bubbles and boils, you can distinguish but faintly the stirring voice of Romance telling of thrilling enterprise and of great adventure. There are few sailors can spin a yarn so much to your liking. Never was there a pirate ship so fleet or so bold; there were never escapes so miraculous, or battles so stern, as you can see when in those long-drawn evenings you sit alone in the unlighted parlour and watch a ship’s log burning on the fire.

Pay no heed to them when they tell you the green flames come from copper, the blue from lead, the pale purple from potassium. The chemist’s laboratory has its own romance, but it shares nothing in common with the high seas of imagination upon which you are riding now. Let the green flames come from copper! They are the emeralds, the treasure of the Orient to you. Let the blue flames come from lead, the pale purple from potassium! In your eyes as you sit there in that darkened room, with the flame-light flickering upon the ceiling and the shadows creeping near to listen to it all, they are the blue sash around the waist, the purple ’kerchief about the head of the bravest and the most bloodthirsty pirate that ever stepped.

At all times a fire is a companion. Yet set but a ship’s log upon the flames and I warrant you will lose yourself and all about you; lose yourself until the last light flickers, the last red ember falls, and the good ship that has borne you so safely over a thousand seas sinks down into the grey ashes of majestic burial.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Patchwork Papers, by E. Temple Thurston