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And whether the sea was rough or calm, and whether the wind was friendly or adverse, it would always glide smoothly and silently, its sails distant and its long strange tiers of oars moving rhythmically. Out of the South it would glide very smoothly and silently over the sea.

Out of the South it was that the White Ship used to come when the moon was full and high in the heavens. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time. Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. At first it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things of things more strange and more distant in space and in time. All my days have I watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. Blue, green, grey, white, or black smooth, ruffled, or mountainous that ocean is not silent. And I have read more of these things, and of many things besides, in the books men gave me when I was young and filled with wonder.īut more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean. The old captains of the sea came often to my grandfather and told him of these things, which in turn he told to my father, and my father told to me in the long autumn evenings when the wind howled eerily from the East. In the days of my grandfather there were many in the days of my father not so many and now there are so few that I sometimes feel strangely alone, as though I were the last man on our planet.įrom far shores came those white-sailed argosies of old from far Eastern shores where warm suns shine and sweet odours linger about strange gardens and gay temples. Past that beacon for a century have swept the majestic barques of the seven seas. Far from the shore stands the grey lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen when the tide is high. I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept before me.