ugh I
were the last man on our planet.
From far shores came those white-sailed argosies of old; from far
Eastern shores where warm suns shine and sweet odours linger about
strange gardens and gay temples. The old captains of the sea came often
to my grandfather and told him of these things, which in turn he told to
my father, and my father told to me in the long autumn evenings when
the wind howled eerily from the East. And I have read more of these
things, and of many things besides, in the books men gave me when I was
young and filled with wonder.
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the
secret lore of ocean. Blue, green, grey, white or black; smooth,
ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my days have I
watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At first it told to
me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with
the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things
more strange and more distant in space and in time. Sometimes at
twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me
glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of
the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the
ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that
were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is
more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the
dreams of Time.
Out of the South it was that the White Ship used to come when the moon
was full and high in the heavens. Out of the South it would glide very
smoothly and silently over the sea. And whether the sea was rough or
calm, and whether the wind was friendly or adverse, it would always
glide smoothly and silently, its sails distent and its long strange
tiers of oars moving rhythmically. One night I espied upon the deck a
man, bearded and robed, and he seemed to beckon me to embark for fair
unknown shores. Many times afterward I saw him under the full moon, and
ever did he beckon me.
Very brightly did the moon shine on the night I answered the call, and I
walked out over the waters to the White Ship on a bridge of moonbeams.
The man who had beckoned now spoke a welcome to me in a soft language I
seemed to know well, and the hours were filled with soft songs of the
oarsmen as we glided away into a mysterious South, golden with the glow
of that full, mellow moon.
And w
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