When my mother looked toward us she saw the man from the strange boat. She thought that some crime had been committed by me or my father to bring a man of such high degree amongst us. She and my brothers were greatly afraid, for they were poor, and those who were high were harsh to them. But the stranger spoke softly, saying, “Good fortune has come to you from the sea to-day.” And when they all turned toward him he said, “I who am very knowledgeable will take your son with me as an apprentice, and I shall instruct him in arts and crafts and mysteries.” My mother said, “The boy is young, sir, and we thought he would be with us for a time longer.” But the man from the strange boat said, “I would not take him to instruct him in arts and crafts and mysteries if he were a day older than he is now.” He said no more, but he went to the table and he laid down on it piece after piece of shining gold. My father went to the table and held his hands around the gold. My mother looked on me who was just twice seven years old that day. I know she thought that she could never bear to part with me. But then she looked on her other sons, and she saw that they were men grown, and she thought they should have more to eat than the meal and the green herbs that were in the pot. She threw her arms around me and I knew it was a last clasp. “He will have to go into far places to learn the arts and crafts and mysteries that I would teach him,” the stranger said. “Will he ever come back to me?” cried my mother. “He will come back to you when his cunning baffles my cunning,” was what the stranger said. My father took the gold that was on the table and made it into a heap. My mother took her arms from around my neck, and my brothers kissed me farewell. Then the man from the strange boat opened the door of our wattled house and went out, and I followed him. We did not go back to the place where he had left his boat of brass. We went to another place where there was a harbor with ships. There we found a ship ready to sail for Urth. My master sent me on board to ask the captain if he would take us on a voyage beyond Urth. The captain said that if my master would guide them past the Magnetberg he would give him the ship to sail where he would after the cargo had been landed. My master said he would do this, and we went on board the ship. It was evening now, and a breeze came up, and the ship sailed away, bringing me from the place where I was born and reared and toward the strange countries that were beyond the rim of the sea. I asked one of the sailors what was the Magnetberg, and he told me that it was a mountain of loadstone that drew the iron out of ships that came near it and left them loosened timbers upon the water. II. THE INACCESSIBLE ISLAND