Now you must know that in those days the seas were full of dread pirates and bold robbers who prowled about seeking plunder, and so, before Daland lay down to sleep, he called his steersman and bade him keep sharp watch. The steersman did--for a little while. But he, too, was tired. First he sang right lustily a merry song about the distant climes where he had traveled, and of the kind winds that would send him back to his sweetheart. Soon, however, his voice faltered; it grew fainter and fainter. His head nodded once, twice. He, too, was asleep. Then, while no one watched, slowly, quietly, out of the west, came an old weather-beaten vessel with red, red sails, straight into that very bay. Only you and I know whence it came, and how endless had been its wanderings. So silently did it sail, so ghostly were its movements, that no one on all Daland's boat heard a single sound. No one heard the noiseless dropping of the anchor, the lowering of those red, red sails. Nor did any one hear the sigh of relief with which the worn sailors crept away to their berths, nor see the hope and longing that lit their pale faces as they saw their captain spring eagerly to the shore. Perhaps the captain stamped too heavily up and down on the wet sand, glad to feel the solid earth under his feet once more. Perhaps he raised his arms to heaven and cried aloud to God to help him now find the maiden fair who would love him truly forever. Why, I do not know, but just then Daland awoke with a start. A strange vessel alongside! How he chided the drowsy steersman! A strange captain on the shore! Quickly he leaped to the sand to greet him! "Whence come you?" asked Daland, "and whither are you going?" The Dutchman replied but little. "Holland," he said, "and a wanderer seeking shelter for his vessel from the storm." Home he had none, nor wife, nor child, and gladly would he pay of his treasures for one night at somebody's hospitable hearth. And while Daland was marveling at this strange tale, and had begun to tell of his own home so near and yet so far away, the stranger, at a sign, had received a huge chest from his ship and was opening it before Daland's eyes. If "all the wild flowers of the forest, all the lilies of the prairie," all the glorious colors of sunrise and sunset, if the rainbow itself, had been packed away in a chest to be suddenly opened before you, perhaps you would have been surprised, too. Gold was there, and silver was there, and the white sheen of pearls, and the bright sparkle of diamonds, and the deep glow of rubies, all there dancing, glittering, in Daland's astonished eyes. Was this some marvelous dream? When he found that the treasure was real, he remembered Senta, and offered the Dutchman his home for the night, telling him that his daughter ...