On this day they heard men speak of the Pyrenees, two men and a woman walking by the river; their voices came to the boat across the water, and they spoke of the Pyrenees.  And on the next day they heard men speak of war.  War that some farmers had fled from on the other side of the mountain.  When Rodriguez heard these chance words his dreams came nearer till they almost touched the edges of reality.

It was the last day of Perez’ rowing.  He rowed well although they neared the cradle of the Segre and he struggled against them in his youth.  Grey peaks began to peer that had nursed that river.  Grey faces of stone began to look over green hills.  They were the Pyrenees.

When Rodriguez saw at last the Pyrenees he drew a breath and was unable to speak.  Soon they were gone again below the hills:  they had but peered for a moment to see who troubled the Segre.

And the sun set and still they did not camp, but Perez rowed on into the starlight.  That day he rowed six hours.

They pitched their tent as well as they could in the darkness; and, breathing a clear new air all crisp from the Pyrenees, they slept outside the threshold of adventure.

Rodriguez awoke cold.  Once more he heard the first blackbird who sings clear at the edge of night all alone in the greyness, the nightingale’s only rival; a rival like some unknown in the midst of a crowd who for a moment leads some well-loved song, in notes more liquid than a master-singer’s; and all the crowd joins in and his voice is lost, and no one learns his name.  At once a host of birds answered him out of dim bushes, whose shapes had barely as yet emerged from night.  And in this chorus Perez awoke, and even Morano.

They all three breakfasted together, and then the wanderers said good-bye to Perez.  And soon he was gone with his bright blue sash, drifting homewards with the Segre, well paid yet singing a little sadly as he drifted; for he had been one of a quest, and now he left it at the edge of adventure, near solemn mountains and, beyond them, romantic, near-unknown lands.  So Perez left and Rodriguez and Morano turned again to the road, all the more lightly because they had not done a full day’s march for so long, and now a great one unrolled its leagues before them.

The heads of the mountains showed themselves again.  They tramped as in the early days of their quest.  And as they went the mountains, unveiling themselves slowly, dropping film after film of distance that hid their mighty forms, gradually revealed to the wanderers the magnificence of their beauty.  Till at evening Rodriguez and Morano stood on a low hill, looking at that tremendous range, which lifted far above the fields of Earth, as though its mountains were no earthly things but sat with Fate and watched us and did not care.