ere full of the broad
daylight, and he breathed the rising wind as though it were a promise of
new life and of unexpected things. I asked him then what his security
was and had he formed a plan, and why he was setting out from this small
place, unless, perhaps, it was his home, of which he might be tired.

"No," he answered, and smiled; "this is not my home; and I have come to
it as you may have come to it, for the first time; and, like you, I came
in after the whole place slept; but as I neared I noticed certain shore
marks and signs which had been given me, and then I knew that I had come
to the starting-place of a long voyage."

"Of what voyage?" I asked.

He answered:

"This is that harbour in the North of which a Breton priest once told me
that I should reach it, and when I had moored in it and laid my stores
on board in order, I should set sail before morning and reach at last a
complete repose." Then he went on with eagerness, though still talking
low: "The voyage which I was born to make in the end, and to which my
desire has driven me, is towards a place in which everything we have
known is forgotten, except those things which, as we knew them,
reminded us of an original joy. In that place I shall discover again
such full moments of content as I have known, and I shall preserve them
without failing. It is in some country beyond this sea, and it has a
harbour like this harbour, only set towards the South, as this is
towards the North; but like this harbour it looks out over an unknown
sea, and like this harbour it enjoys a perpetual light. Of what the
happy people in this country are, or of how they speak, no one has told
me, but they will receive me well, for I am of one kind with themselves.
But as to how I shall know this harbour, I can tell you: there is a
range of hills, broken by a valley through which one sees a further and
a higher range, and steering for this hollow in the hills one sees a
tower out to sea upon a rock, and high up inland a white quarry on a
hill-top; and these two in line are the leading marks by which one gets
clear into the mouth of the river, and so to the wharves of the town.
And there," he ended, "I shall come off the sea for ever, and every one
will call me by my name."

The sun was now near the horizon, but not yet risen, and for a little
time he said nothing to me nor I to him, for he was at work sweating up
the halyard and setting the peak. He let go the mooring knot also,