As he came down from the low hills, the sight of ocean rounded like a bowl under the wide arch of the sky, the distant and titanic clouds piled above the unseen shores of Africa, filled his heart for a moment with beauty. But then he thought: “This is like Tyre. It is by the shore of this same sea that Judith has gone to live.” And he cursed the beauty that hurt him. It was late when he came to the shore, and night was already moving upon the deep. In profound silence he leaned above the harbor wall and regarded the shadowless water which with the sound of immemorial tides passed under him in the darkness. It was the season when the mists from the ocean blow landward in the evening. In the gray night fog the masts of the vessels at anchor rocked toward one another on the long, low waves; and the mist, salty with sea air, mingled along the quays with the odors of the city. It was the dark of the moon in the month of Nisan. The moon was gone, and his youth with it. Other moons would rise, fall through the branches of a tree, and cheat a bird to sing. But where would Jonah be? And Judith, in her great house over the terraces of Tyre; she would grow old, soon she would be like Deborah, looking backward over her life.... What happened to youth, to beauty? Where did they go? They hardly lasted at all. Night hung black and silent over the sea. The wings of angels leaned upon the wind which moved dark and vast between the earth and sky. The stars paled, and the sun rose like a ball of fire in the east. Then the ocean mist, cold as frost, melted away. The tide turned, and the waves, breaking far out, spoke with their murmur like the sound of wind to the sleeping city on the shore. In the morning Jonah found a ship bound for Tarshish. The cargo was already loaded; and when he had made his bargain, he went aboard. Bearded and singing, the seamen hoisted the sails, yellow as a slice of moon; with a sly, tranquil motion the ship moved out of the harbor, over the blue sea, sparkling in the sun, past sails stained blue as the sky, or brown as the sands. The white roofs of Joppa faded behind them in the east, lost in the gradual fog; the seagulls cried above them; and Jonah sat silent, dreaming, gazing at the sea. He was tired, and listless. “Now,” he said to himself, “God has lost me.” And he thought of Deborah with sadness and peace. He remembered what she had said to him, as she had held him, weeping bitterly, in her arms, on her breast. “Jonah,” she had said, “when you are dead, or perhaps very old and ready to die, people will say of you, ‘There, he was a great prophet.’ And they will feel honored because they knew you, because their names will be spoken of with yours. But now ...” she sighed; she wanted to say, “now you are only a nuisance.” What she finally said was, “Well, people are like that.” But Jonah knew what she wanted to say. And as he sat quietly on the deck of the ship under the yellow, curved sail, he thought,