“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, but he held the end of the rope in his hand and paid it out, standing and looking upward, as the sail slowly filled and his craft drifted towards me.  He pressed the tiller with his knee to keep her full.

I now knew by his eyes and voice that he was from the West, and I could not see him leave me without asking him from what place he came that he should set out for such another place.  So I asked him:  “Are you from Ireland, or from Brittany, or from the Islands?” He answered me:  “I am from none of these, but from Cornwall.”  And as he answered me thus shortly he still watched the sail and still pressed the tiller with his knee, and still paid out the mooring rope without turning round.

“You cannot make the harbour,” I said to him.  “It is not of this world.”

Just at that moment the breeze caught the peak of his jolly brown sail; he dropped the tail of the rope:  it slipped and splashed into the harbour slime.  His large boat heeled, shot up, just missed my cable; and then he let her go free, and she ran clear away.  As she ran he looked over his shoulder and laughed most cheerily; he greeted me with his eyes, and he waved his hand to me in the morning light.