The ship had drawn in towards the shore. She was lying to with her sails put aback, her black hull rising and falling morosely against the tumultuous purple of the clouds. Nearer still a small galley came heading for the shore with a gush of foam at her prow as the men in her bent to the oars. The galley came swinging in on the broad backs of the sluggish waves, and shooting the surf, grounded on the sands, the men in her leaping out and dragging her beyond the reach of the sea. There was a more mellow light on Mark's face as he pointed Jehan to the boat, and the ship swaying on the sun-gilded waves. "They will carry you to Caerleon," he said. "And you, sire?" "There is need of me at Tintagel." "I have sworn troth." Jehan stood and looked into the west at the clouds gold-ribbed, domed, snow, and purple. His face might have been lit by the warm glow of a lamp, so clear and radiant was it. He had thrust the King's ring into his bosom. "The Lord Jesu speed me," he said; "through the Lady Igraine's face I am no longer a coward. God speed me to save her!" Mark kissed him on the forehead. "You have a soul in you," he said. The man stood on the strand under the black cliffs and watched the boat climb the waves. He saw the galley hoisted up, the sails flapping in the wind as the ship sheered out and ran for the open sea. Her sails gleamed white against the tumultuous west, and the ridged waters hid her hull. Overhead, the gulls screamed and circled. Mark, shouldering his spear, turned back and climbed the cliff, with his face towards the towers of Tintagel. IV A galley came up the Usk towards dawn, towards dawn when the woods were hung with mist, and a vast quiet brooded over the world. The river made a moist murmur through reeds and sedge, seeming to chant of golden meads as it ran to wed the sea. All the eastern casements of Caerleon glimmered gold as the dawn struck over wood and hill; the city's walls smiled out of the night; her vanes and towers were noosed as with fire. The galley drew to the great quay, and poled to the steps as the city awoke. A lad, with his russet mantle turned up over his girdle, passed up from the galley and the quay towards the southern gate of the city of Caerleon. His step was sanguine, his face deep with dreams. He seemed to personate "Youth" entering that city of woeful magic that poets and painters name "Romance." Within the walls the stir of life had been sounded in by the clarions of the dawn. Seafaring men went down to the river and their ships. At the gate arms rang, tumbrils rumbled. Slim girls passed out into the orchards and the fields, under the trees all heavily grained, russet and green and gold. Women drew water at the wells. The merchant folk in the market square spread their stalls for the day--fruit, flesh, fish, cloth, and the fabrics of the East, armour and brazen jars, vases of strange device.