Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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purple and red sponge, and the oozy inky kelp oscillate for ever and without rest. Here live the squid and sea bass and grouper, and an occasional venture- some chalk-bellied shark, turning in the shafts of ocean-filtered sunlight, sends them darting. ,Sometimes the fog rolls in and binds the whole coast in gray and stills the beat of the surf and the tolling of the black bell buoy moored off the point. Down that coast and through such a fog the ship came, feeling her' way close in and looking for the black bell-buoy. An old ship, her schooner hull still graceful but her masts cut off short, she easily rode over and down the languid swells, her muttering Diesel barely giving her way. In her bows, crouching, his elbows on his knees, and staring at his folded hands, was the lookout. His hair held droplets of water and his shirt and pants hung damp about his folded body. Once in a while he would raise his head and gaze into the fog, straining for the loom of the land, and then would turn his head sideways listening for the tolling of the black bell buoy. A n In the Wheelhouse was the helmsman, his feet wide apart, leaning forward with his weight on the spokes of the wheel. He swayed gently with the even roll of the ship and looked forward at the wet deck, the black wet canvas that covered the hatches, and he quickly studied the symmetrical arcs the tip of the ship's foremast cut in the fog. Then he glanced at the compass, shifted his weight back and gave the wheel a half a turn, let it go and when it had spun back to its original position, again settled his hands on the spokes. He leaned forward. his eyes rose and fixed themselves on the curved back of the lookout forewardin, the bow. He listened for the melancholy sound of the bell buoy. On the wing of the bridge the mate leaned his elbows on the cracked and blistered paint of the rail. His ears, tuned for the distant note of the bell buoy. heard only the sound of the water close overside and the myriad creakings of the ship's timbers, waxing and waning with the vessel's measured roll and the mutter of the Diesel. The stowaway sat on the high sill of the cabin door, his knees drawn up under his chin. He looked out at the fog through the bars of the rail, at the patches of foam sliding easily past, and at the indefinable point where the gray fog and gray sea merged. The Captain sat behind the stowaway, in the cabin, and looked at the lad's back. He took a can of snuff from his pocket, where it had worn a round white ring in the blue cloth, and put a pinch under his lip. Then he put the can back. He listened for the melancholy note of the black bell buoy. When he heard it he asked the boy, as if the sound had been a signal, f'Can you swim? - The Twenty-one

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Thin Man frothed at the mouth and shrieked in short accents that he thought that all the Fat Men should work and all the Thin Men should live in Luxury. All the Thin Men in the mob cheered madly and most of the judges opened the other eye and sat up. Now it was Rhea's turn. The mob calmed down and the judges listened expectantly as she spoke. I think the Very Fat Man and the Extremely Thin Man have arguments- BUT-wliy doesn't everybody work? At- this the mob screamed its approval and after thirty seconds deliberation, the judges not only accepted Rhea's motion, but unanimously elected her head of the New-Government-In-VV.hich-Everyone-Works. Everybody immediately began working. However, that night, The Very Fat Man, disguised as The Extremely Thin Man, crept into the palace when Rhea was asleep and assassinated her. Imme- diately confusion broke out, with all the Fat Men slaying all the Thin Men land vice-versa?-and by the week-end there was not a single person in The Big City left alive. - Moral: Little girls shouldn't meddle in politics. ITlCid6Tlt Punta Baia MICHAEL MOUNTJOX' Two hundred miles south of the American border, where the finger of Punta Baja thrusts out into the Pacific, the coast of Lower California drops suddenly and steeply down to where the rocks are red and wet, and the long combers that roll four thousand miles across the blue Pacific smash in columns of white and subside in puddles of bubbly foam and froth among the rocks. And all along that desolate and barren coast, the only sounds are the ceaseless rush of the wind and the crash of the surf and the cries of the effortless white gulls end- lessly cruising the air currents thrown up from the backs of the cresting waves and the high wind-scoured rocks. Sometimes a little desert fox comes and stands with wind-whipped tail and quivering nose, and regards the alien blue horizon, or trots along at sliver of sand among the rocks, nimbly avoiding the rush and spent backwash of the sea. A moment after he passes, the sea destroys his delicate footprints. And under the sea in a green half-light world, ten thousand creatures lead fierce and unthinking lives among the pinnacles and chasms of the creamy coral, and the unending motion of the sea makes the sea jungle, the beds of Twenty

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f boy turned. Sure, Then the Captain called the mateiand when he came the two stood over the boy until the black bell buoy came in sight, heaving its round black bulk farther out of the water to reveal the dark brown dripping barnacles and turning slightly so the three could see the large white number-8- painted on the side of the buoy. The bell clanged dismally and the Captain and the mate held the boy against the rail and one of them stooped and pulled tlie boy's shoes off and then they picked him up and threw him far out over tje rail. When the boy came up in a puddle of foam the captain pointed out into the fog and shouted, Swim, kid, it's only a couple of hundred yards, for the captain thought he could see the loom of the land and hear the mutter of tie surf. The boy wiped the wet hair from his eyes and laughed and shook his fist and shouted back, Well, thanks for the lift, you old bastard. And then the captain and the mate saw the last of him, as he turned in the water and struck out toward land, past the black bell buoy. The ship swung away, her Diesel picked up, and the fog closed in on her writhing wake. Five hours later the ship lay anchored in the slanting afternoon sunshine a mile from the fish cannery of Frank Tsuomoto, waiting for the boat to come out. The captain sat in the cabin, waiting .... his head swung abruptly, for he had heard a sound,-the melancholy note of a buoy. He heard it again and went out on deck and saw a black bellbuoy moving with ease and ponderous grace past the side of his anchored ship. And then the buoy heaved part of its bulk farther out of the sea to reveal dripping barnacles and then with a quirk of the current rotated and the captain saw with narrowed and horror-filled eyes the large white number-8. Twenty-two