Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/77

home to France! He was a fearful gambler, not a wise man. And he may yet come back to the Coast and lose it all and his head too.”

“Still,” said Henry with a grown finality, “still, I think it could be done, so only a man thought about it and considered it.”

In a few days they were coming close to land. One morning the pale ghost of a mountain was sitting on the edge of the circle. Logs and branches of trees went floating by now and again, and land birds flew out to them and rested in the rigging.

They were come to the home of Summer, whence it goes yearly to the northern places. In the day the sun was a glaring brass cymbal, the sky washed out and livid around it, and at night the big fishes swam about the ship with curving rivers of pale fire flowing behind them. From off the forepeak were hurled millions of flying diamonds by the raging prow. The sea was a round lake of quiet undulation, spread with a silken skin. Slowly, slowly, passing to rearward, the water set up a pleasant hypnosis in the brain. It was like looking into a fire. One saw nothing, yet only with infinite struggle could he move his eyes; and finally his brain dreamed off, though he was not sleeping.

There is a peace in the tropic oceans which passes a desire for understanding. Destination is no longer an end, but only to be sailing, sailing, out of the kingdom of time. For months and years they