It was strange that he should have the fear of the sea so strong on him to-night, when all around him was calm and evening gold. He had never been afraid of the sea when he had it under his feet. Once he had gone to play at a dance across the sands, and had sailed home again at break of day. He had come away from the hot room with the dancing still in his brain, and gone down to the forsaken, dream-like shore. It was black under the chestnuts roofing the narrow path, but a grey light stood over the tide that seemed to grow upward from the sea. The water broke crisply and coolly at his feet as he stumbled over the beach and came to the sand. Near to him, like a figure flung on a cloud, a man was holding a vague and ghostly boat, and out on the dim tide where it merged into the air, a shadowy ship pulled at a shadowy rope. She, too, was the merest phantasm of herself, with her spidery cords and nebulous mast and spars. It was impossible to believe that she could support the pressure of a foot, so that the life and lift in her as he scrambled aboard came with a shock of exquisite surprise. His body and brain felt heavy as lead against the lightness of her build, and yet the effect of his weight was merely an increased impression of her buoyant strength. His mind, that was still full of whirling sounds, swayed to the water-floor on which she rode. From the elastic spring of her under his feet, it seemed as if she must leap into the air as soon as she was released. Turned as she was on her anchor to meet the tide, she swung on her heel the moment she felt the sail, and was off like a racer before the flag is down. The boat dropped from them and became a blur, and the line of shore was blurred, and the climbing town. The few dim lights that burned were still to be seen after the shapes of the houses had been painted out, showing mistily yellow above the sea, like lamps in the long slits of a castle wall. Then they, too, went as if suddenly blown out, and only the cap of pine that crowned the hill spoke to the presence of earth against the sky. Kit was a crouched shadow in the boat, staring ahead of him for a sight of the marsh, but the great, grey wing of the sail seemed spread across the world. The wind was behind them and they fled hushed, as shadows of clouds move silently on the sea. The motion was easing as sleep, and healing as still prayer. He thought of the dancing figures in the town which had seemed so beautiful to him while he watched, yet were earthy and clumsy and slow compared with this. Even the music—even the fiddle itself—seemed noisy beside that delicate wash at the keel. This was the peace of the sea of which men spoke, this great and painless detachment from things of the earth. In the wide spaces how easily God was found! On the water, as in the mountains and on the Hill of Light, it was good for men to be there. Sometimes he slept for a few moments, and awakened again and slept, but the man at the tiller