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two hundred years so well, Free from decay and mortal taint? What—but the prayers of a patron saint! A hundred leagues from Manila town, The San Gregorio's helm came down; Round she went on her heel, and not A cable's length from a galliot That rocked on the waters, just abreast Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou-west. Then said the galleon's Commandante, General Pedro Sobriente, (That was his rank on land and main, A regular custom of Old Spain:) "My pilot is dead of scurvy; may I ask the longitude, time, and day?" The first two given and compared, The third—the Commandante stared! "The first of June? I make it second." Said the stranger, "Then you 've wrongly reckoned; I make it first: as you came this way, You should have lost—d'ye see—a day— Lost a day, as you plainly see, On the hundred and eightieth degree." "Lost a day?" "Yes, if not rude, When did you make east longitude?" "On the ninth of May our patron's day." "On the ninth?—you had no ninth of May! Eighth and tenth was there—but stay"— Too late—for the galleon bore away. Lost was the day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in the trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse: Wrecked was their patron's only day— What would the holy fathers say? Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, The galleon's chaplain—a learned man— "Nothing is lost that you can regain: And the way to look for a thing, is plain To go where you lost it, back again. Back with your galleon till you see The hundred and eightieth degree. Wait till the rolling year goes round, And there will the missing day be found. For you'll find—if computation 's true, That sailing East will give to you Not only one ninth of May, but two— One for the good saint's present cheer, And one for the day we lost last year." Back to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelve-month, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree, She rose and fell on a tropic sea. But lo! when it came the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save that day. To cut a lengthening story short, She never saved it. Made the sport Of evil spirits, and baffling wind, She was always before or just behind, One day too soon or one day too late, And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait. She had two Eighths, as she idly lay, Two Tenths, but never a Ninth of May. And there she rides through two hundred years Of dreary penance and anxious fears: Yet through the grace of the saint she served, Captain and crew are still preserved. By a computation that still holds good, Made by the Holy Brotherhood, The San Gregorio will cross that line, In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine: Just three hundred years to a day From the time she lost the ninth of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters, looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun, The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey; The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck— And the yearly galleon sails no more, In or out of the olden bay, For the blessed patron has found his day.
Such is the legend. Hear this truth:
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint:—
Each lost day has its patron saint!
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