Read "Two Sailor Lads" by Gordon Stables online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was just such a night as a sailor loves -- bright and starry, with a ten-knot breeze blowing, and enough sea on to heel the ship over to leeward, and make one feel one really is afloat on the ocean wave; a night to make one feel rather proud of his ship too than otherwise, if there really is any go and independence about her; a night on which the seaman is apt to pause in his walk fore and aft the decks, and gaze over the bulwarks at the lapping, leaping, bubbling waters, that lisp to him, whisper to him, sing to him, talk to him, and tell him of home.
If he is leaning over the lee side on a night like this with the wind abeam, the water seems ever so much darker and nearer, and the wavelets make pretence every minute to jump up and kiss the hand he extends towards them. If he is leaning over the weather side, the water appears brighter but far off, for it catches the glints of the starlight and the reflected shimmer from the long, clear line of wave-scoured copper, ever and anon showing up as the vessel swings to leeward.