James Hopper

“ Then afterward came the rush to the goldfields. So that I never saw the Notre Dame de Nantes again. Beauty, nor the black ship, nor this little model in the bottle. In that box it must have been ever since my mother put it away, probably soon after I had left home on the gold venture; in that box it must have been all these years!"
"Oh," the little girl cried, "how lonely! How lonely and dark they must have felt!"
"Why, who, Beauty?"
"The crew—the captain, and the crew, and the carpenter, and the little apprentice boy, Daddie." ”

“ There was only one man on deck, Beauty—on the whole deck just one man. I remember him well: he was all crooked—a crooked nose, crooked teeth, and a crooked smile. And there was something nasty in the way he answered my simple question about the Notre Dame de Nantes. 'The Notre Dame de Nantes?’ he smiled. 'She's not anchored anywhere about here; she's not anchored at all. ”

“ She was now peering through the glass into the bottle. "Oh," she cried with mock annoyance, "what a rough, noisy father I have! You've scared them all down below, Daddie! And they were all up on deck, and I was having such a good time with them—Captain Kersedore, and Michel, and the crew, and Ives-Marie. They won't come up again to-night. You have frightened them, Daddie."
"Beauty," he said, "I am going to take the little ship away from you." ”

“ The two, now stretched face down above, looked on breathless. "It's gaining, it's gaining!" the little girl cried. With a vast, silent swoop, the fog now pounced down upon them and enveloped them hermetically.
The father, straining his eyes in the white smother, could see nothing. But to the child—so it seemed as he watched her—glimpses were being given still. She pressed her little heart, she breathed fast. "How piercing her eyes!" he thought. "How piercing are children's eyes!" ”

“ I did not know anything about them at the time—nothing about the coming of the ship nor the shriving And here was the patio full of these strange men, some of them with rings in their ears, standing smiling and smiling, turning their heads this way and that, and I so astonished it was some moments before I started to send them on about their business. ”

“ He would limp when the captain was looking, and laugh when the captain wasn't."
"Who is Michel?"
"He's the carpenter. Don't you remember? He has the freckled face, and when he smiles his mouth opens from ear to ear. He tells me stories, Daddie, beautiful stories. One is of a city that sank long ago, and is now deep beneath the sea. Once a year, when the moon is bright, it rises slowly to the top, all its bells ringing and all the people in their finest clothes walking about. They stroll about all night in the moonlight, all the bells ringing ”