"This was the first of many voyages; he remained in the San Francisco trade for several years. Half a dozen times he passed the island, always leaving it far to leeward; and the memory didn’t grow cold. Rather, it burned warmer and higher under this harrowing tantalization, a flame fed by hope and clarified by love. Some time, if he waited patiently, the elements would be propitious, the right chance would come. "But he, too, became practical about it, recognizing that until he was his own master he wouldn’t be free to seize a chance if it came his way. He saved his money, and worked hard to advance his reputation. In due time he was rewarded with the command of a little barque. For a number of voyages his owners sent him to the China Sea; it was at this time that I first met him, to fall under the spell of his romantic destiny. At last, however, he arrived in Singapore one voyage to learn that he’d been chartered to carry coals from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco. He felt a wonderful elation at the news. It looked like his long-awaited opportunity. "In the natural order of things, you know, on the passage from Newcastle to California, he would cross the Pacific in the westerlies below the southeast trades, strike north through the trade winds close hauled on the starboard tack, fetch within a reasonable distance of the coast of Mexico, pick up the northeast trades there, and take a weatherly departure for the last stage of the journey. By crossing the equator in 135° west longitude he would be thrown to leeward heavily on that last stage. But he must chance it; no one would know, and he could make his easting in the North Pacific, above the trades. Chance it?—he couldn’t have failed to accept the opening, his whole life was centred on the play. God knows, he’d waited long enough, devotedly enough, for deliverance from this protracted anguish, for the resumption of happiness, for another glimpse of the form of love and beauty, for a sight of the island that more and more appeared to him in the nature of a vivid dream.