of Nature and sea, as if a fury had
run down the pages. But there are soft threads in its rough woof--I tell
it just as the Oar-Captain told it.

The sun sank over the right-hand side of the ship--red, while the sky was
cloudless. And the light breeze fell, just as the dusk came, and our
brown sail trembled for a moment, and then sank back against the mast.
The men, laughing, leaned in a row along the bulwarks, while my lord
paced up and down on the aft-deck. The steersman pulls in his oar, the
ship swings idle, and soon the blue smoke ascends in a straight, fine
line through the evening air from the open dish of black charcoal where
they cook at the mast-foot.

It is evening, and soft clothes are spread about on the deck. Far away
the sea stretches, till it fades into the glow of the almost dark sky;
while on the other side, where no man looks, is dusk-darkness, cold,
abandoned, the dead regions of what was morning. After a while, when the
glory has quite faded out of the sky, the men murmur and slowly lie down
on their clothes talking for a while. That gradually ceases, and we lie
silent, while there comes faint creaking of cordage as the ship lazily
swings. My lord has ceased pacing the aft-deck. We lie watching the
stars come out.

Slowly they come, the eyes of other worlds. Lying close under the rail I
see a little track of lights come from far away, till it seems they
become scared and stop, and other lights come out behind them--a
twinkling row, till they reach the bulwark over my head. Next me a man
sighs in his sleep.

I lie thinking of the lands to the south, and of my lord. When I turn
my head I can still see him in the gathering dark, where he leans dim by
the black line of the steering-oar. Looking up my soul leaves the ship,
and seeming to gaze down from the stars I feel very far away. Slowly
they come, silent lights. I remember old sagas and faces--old faces----

It is morning. The fresh wind lifts the sail outward; the hair is blown
in the men's faces; the water whispers and chuckles merrily under the
side of the leaning ship. The thin ropes creak, the shields over the
sides rattle and jerk. I and another swing on the steering-oar, and the
men run along the decks with glad faces.

It is afternoon. The ship lies on her side; the flying water runs over
as it goes by. Dark clouds have come out of the east, and are streaked
from their low-lying bank in long streamers along the sky. The mast
bends, t