William Jordan gave this promise, and returned to the sea. For hours he walked up and down the shore, his eyes ever upon that wonderful, endless expanse. When at last he grew very weary, and his unaccustomed limbs began to fail, he offered an old fisherman some pieces of silver to row him again out to sea. Until the sun dipped behind the line of the coast, he sat at the helm of the boat drinking long and deep draughts of the free and noble life that lay all about him. Men and cities were far from his thoughts during these enchanted hours. His mind became beautiful with fantasies and copious with ideas. As he reclined on the bosom of this great and mysterious wilderness, with the fowls of the air flapping over his head, the strange craft ever tossing from side to side, and a hungry waste all about him, capable of devouring him yet incomprehensibly refraining from so doing, his life acquired a texture which it had never had before. Even the ancient authors, with all the subtle aromas and the powerful essences their mighty imaginations had distilled through the ages, could not concentrate into their magic ink this relentless, yet elusive spaciousness which this dweller in cities now beheld. The caged bird began again to croon its odd, wild, undeveloped melodies. Fragments of curious, haunted, half-remembered phrases came upon his lips. The stinging tears crept again to his eyes. Through the haze of their blindness the waters were no longer to be seen. But he could hear them gurgling against the sides of the boat. There was a boom of distant breakers, the creak of oars, the voices of the four winds and of the winged inhabitants of the air. The mists of the evening slowly overspread the wilderness. Silently, stealthily, they came unperceived. They were all part of the Idea. He did not resent their appearance when he saw them there, veiling all things with their subtle presence. He was still crooning his queer songs. Men and cities, street-persons and pieces of silver had long vanished from his consciousness. After a while, with an involuntary deference to the chill of the night, he lay down on the floor of the boat on the inhospitable rough boards, which yet were as soft as feathers. His hands were clasped about his head, as if to support the delicious fantasies that were in his brain. He seemed to swoon with the rapture of his new and brave identity. “This is the life of heroes, O Achilles!” the familiar voices of the night and the sea were constantly murmuring.