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.
He held her well. A clean wake ran behind her. He put her straight for the harbour-mouth and pa.s.sed the pier-heads and took the sea outside.
Whether in honest truth he was a fisherman out for fishes who chose to fence with me, or whether in that cruise of his he landed up in a Norwegian bay, or thought better of it in Orkney, or went through the sea and through death to the place he desired, I have never known.
I watched him holding on, and certainly he kept a course. The sun rose, the town awoke, but I would not cease from watching him. His sail still showed a smaller and a smaller point upon the sea; he did not waver. For an hour I caught it and lost it, and caught it again, as it dwindled; for half another hour I could not swear to it in the blaze. Before I had wearied it was gone.
Oh! my companions, both you to whom I dedicate this book and you who have accompanied me over other hills and across other waters or before the guns in Burgundy, or you others who were with me when I seemed alone--that ulterior sh.o.r.e was the place we were seeking in every cruise and march and the place we thought at last to see. We, too, had in mind that Town of which this man spoke to me in the Scottish harbour before he sailed out northward to find what he could find. But I did not follow him, for even if I had followed him I should not have found the Town.