_First Sailor._ It is long enough, and too long, Forgael has been bringing us through the waste places of the great sea. _Second Sailor._ We did not meet with a ship to make a prey of these eight weeks, or any shore or island to plunder or to harry. It is a hard thing, age to be coming on me, and I not to get the chance of doing a robbery that would enable me to live quiet and honest to the end of my lifetime. _First Sailor._ We are out since the new moon. What is worse again, it is the way we are in a ship, the barrels empty and my throat shrivelled with drought, and nothing to quench it but water only. _Forgael_ [_in his sleep_]. Yes; there, there; that hair that is the colour of burning. _First Sailor._ Listen to him now, calling out in his sleep. _Forgael_ [_in his sleep_]. That pale forehead, that hair the colour of burning. _First Sailor._ Some crazy dream he is in, and believe me it is no crazier than the thought he has waking. He is not the first that has had the wits drawn out from him through shadows and fantasies. _Second Sailor._ That is what ails him. I have been thinking it this good while. _First Sailor._ Do you remember that galley we sank at the time of the full moon? _Second Sailor._ I do. We were becalmed the same night, and he sat up there playing that old harp of his until the moon had set. _First Sailor._ I was sleeping up there by the bulwark, and when I woke in the sound of the harp a change came over my eyes, and I could see very strange things. The dead were floating upon the sea yet, and it seemed as if the life that went out of every one of them had turned to the shape of a man-headed bird—grey they were, and they rose up of a sudden and called out with voices like our own, and flew away singing to the west. Words like this they were singing: ‘Happiness beyond measure, happiness where the sun dies.’ _Second Sailor._ I understand well what they are doing. My mother used to be talking of birds of the sort. They are sent by the lasting watchers to lead men away from this world and its women to some place of shining women that cast no shadow, having lived before the making of the earth. But I have no mind to go following him to that place. _First Sailor._ Let us creep up to him and kill him in his sleep. _Second Sailor._ I would have made an end of him long ago, but that I was in dread of his harp. It is said that when he plays upon it he has power over all the listeners, with or without the body, seen or unseen, and any man that listens grows to be as mad as himself. _First Sailor._ What way can he play it, being in his sleep? _Second Sailor._ But who would be our captain then to make out a course from the Bear and the Pole-star, and to bring us back home?