When I had done this she soon tugged at the chain and I slackened all the halyards.  I put the cover on the mainsail, and as I did so, looking aft, I noted the high mountain-side behind the town standing clear in the dawn.  I turned eastward to receive it.  The light still lifted, and though I had not slept I could not but stay up and watch the glory growing over heaven.  It was just then, when I had stowed everything away, that I heard to the right of me the crooning of a man.

A few moments before I should not have seen him under the darkness of the sea-wall, but the light was so largely advanced (it was nearly two o’clock) that I now clearly made out both his craft and him.

She was sturdy and high, and I should think of slight draught.  She was of great beam.  She carried but one sail, and that was brown.  He had it loose, with the peak dipped ready for hoisting, and he himself was busy at some work upon the floor, stowing and fitting his bundles, and as he worked he crooned gently to himself.  It was then that I hailed him, but in a low voice, so much did the silence of that place impress itself upon all living beings who were strange to it.  He looked up and told me that he had not seen me come in nor heard the rattling of the chain.  I asked him what he would do so early, whether he was off fishing at that hour or whether he was taking parcels down the coast for hire or goods to sell at some other port.  He answered me that he was doing none of those things.

“What cruise, then, are you about to take?” I said.

“I am off,” he answered in a low and happy voice, “to find what is beyond the sea.”

“And to what shore,” said I, “do you mean to sail?”

He answered:  “I am out upon this sea northward to where they say there is no further shore.”

As he spoke he looked towards that horizon which now stood quite clean and clear between the pier-heads:  his eyes were 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: