



Produced by Annie R. McGuire








[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]

Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.

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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.

VOL. XVII.--NO. 859. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.

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[Illustration]

MOTHER-IN-LAW TO THE CREW.

ONE OF THE OLD SAILOR'S YARNS.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.


It was a beautiful summer morning. There was a light wind from the
southwest, which just tempered to a degree of endurance the blazing heat
of the full-orbed sun. A few wisps of feathery white lay slantwise
across the broad field of deep-toned blue sky, promising a change of
weather within a day's time. The sea was a vast undulating mirror of
blue, as if all the sapphires in the world and in all the other worlds
had been melted and poured into earth's majestic basin. From the rounded
<DW72>s of the broad low swells the rays of the sun danced in a million
flashes of dazzling silver. The swells themselves ran in slow, sinuous
folds to the inner bar, where they reared themselves in curving walls of
translucent green shot with bars of snow, and then with the burst of
far-off thunder fell forward into spurting, writhing acres of yeasty
foam. Softness, warmth, and languorous sparkle lay over the sea.

Far away upon the uncertain horizon loomed the black hull of an ocean
liner, cleaving her way across the polished path at twenty knots an
