and when they had
passed he stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths
of which his eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could
scarcely be withdrawn. A sun beamed thence that filled the air with
sparkle and the sea with a thousand lights, and looking on these he was
reminded of his home at Tara: of the columns of white and yellow bronze
that blazed out sunnily on the sun, and the red and white and yellow
painted roofs that beamed at and astonished the eye.

Sailing thus, lost in a succession of days and nights, of winds and
calms, he came at last to an island.

His back was turned to it, and long before he saw it he smelled it and
wondered; for he had been sitting as in a daze, musing on a change that
had seemed to come in his changeless world; and for a long time he could
not tell what that was which made a difference on the salt-whipped wind
or why he should be excited. For suddenly he had become excited and his
heart leaped in violent expectation.

"It is an October smell," he said.

"It is apples that I smell."

He turned then and saw the island, fragrant with apple trees, sweet with
wells of wine; and, hearkening towards the shore, his ears, dulled yet
with the unending rhythms of the sea, distinguished and were filled
with song; for the isle was, as it were, a nest of birds, and they sang
joyously, sweetly, triumphantly.

He landed on that lovely island, and went forward under the darting
birds, under the apple boughs, skirting fragrant lakes about which were
woods of the sacred hazel and into which the nuts of knowledge fell and
swam; and he blessed the gods of his people because of the ground that
did not shiver and because of the deeply rooted trees that could not gad
or budge.

CHAPTER VI

Having gone some distance by these pleasant ways he saw a shapely house
dozing in the sunlight.

It was thatched with the wings of birds, blue wings and yellow and white
wings, and in the centre of the house there was a door of crystal set in
posts of bronze.

The queen of this island lived there, Rigru (Large-eyed), the daughter
of Lodan, and wife of Daire Degamra. She was seated on a crystal
throne with her son Segda by her side, and they welcomed the High King
courteously.

There were no servants in this palace; nor was there need for them. The
High King found that his hands had washed themselves, and when later on
he noticed that food had been placed before him he noti