Chapter XI

CHAPTER XI

Martin went back to his pearl-diving article, which would have been
finished sooner if it had not been broken in upon so frequently by
his attempts to write poetry. His poems were love poems, inspired
by Ruth, but they were never completed. Not in a day could he
learn to chant in noble verse. Rhyme and metre and structure were
serious enough in themselves, but there was, over and beyond them,
an intangible and evasive something that he caught in all great
poetry, but which he could not catch and imprison in his own. It
was the elusive spirit of poetry itself that he sensed and sought
after but could not capture. It seemed a glow to him, a warm and
trailing vapor, ever beyond his reaching, though sometimes he was
rewarded by catching at shreds of it and weaving them into phrases
that echoed in his brain with haunting notes or drifted across his
vision in misty wafture of unseen beauty. It was baffling. He
ached with desire to express and could but gibber prosaically as
everybody gibbered. He read his fragments aloud. The metre
marched along on perfect feet, and the rhyme pounded a longer and
equally faultless rhythm, but the glow and high exaltation that he
felt within were lacking. He could not understand, and time and
again, in despair, defeated and depressed, he returned to his
article. Prose was certainly an easier medium.

Following the "Pearl-diving," he wrote an article on the sea as a
career, another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeast
trades. Then he tried, as an experiment, a short story, and before
he broke his stride he had finished six short stories and
despatched them to various magazines. He wrote prolifically,
intensely, from morning till night, and late at night, except when
he broke off to go to the reading-room, draw books from the
library, or to call on Ruth. He was profoundly happy. Life was
pitched high. He was in a fever that never broke. The joy of
creation that is supposed to belong to the gods was his. All the
life about him - the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, the
slatternly form of his sister, and the jeering face of Mr.
Higginbotham - was a dream. The real world was in his mind, and
the stories he wrote were so many pieces of reality out of his
mind.

The days were too short. There was so much he wanted to study. He
cut his sleep down to five hours and found that he could get along
upon it. He tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came back
to five. He could joyfully have spent all his waking hours upon
any one of his pursuits. It was with regret that he ceased from
writing to study, that he ceased from study to go to the library,
that he tore himself away from that chart-room of knowledge or from
the