The "Alice Jean".

One moonlit night a ship drove in,          A ghost ship from the west,      Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller,          Like a mermaid drest      In long green weed and barnacles:          She beached and came to rest.      All the watchers of the coast          Flocked to view the sight,      Men and women streaming down          Through the summer night,      Found her standing tall and ragged          Beached in the moonlight.      Then one old woman looked and wept          "The 'Alice Jean'?    But no!      The ship that took my Dick from me          Sixty years ago      Drifted back from the utmost west          With the ocean's flow?      "Caught and caged in the weedy pool          Beyond the western brink,      Where crewless vessels lie and rot          in waters black as ink.      Torn out again by a sudden storm          Is it the 'Jean', you think?"      A hundred women stared agape,          The menfolk nudged and laughed,      But none could find a likelier story          For the strange craft.      With fear and death and desolation          Rigged fore and aft.      The blind ship came forgotten home          To all but one of these      Of whom none dared to climb aboard her:          And by and by the breeze      Sprang to a storm and the "Alice Jean"          Foundered in frothy seas.