the humming tautness of the sheet, in everything about me there was exuberance and joy.  The sun upon the twenty million faces of the waves made, music rather than laughter, and the energy which this first warmth of the year had spread all over the Channel and shore, while it made life one, seemed also to make it innumerable.  We were now not only three, the wind and my boat and I; we were all part (and masters for the moment) of a great throng.  I knew them all by their names, which I had learnt a long time ago, and had sung of them in the North Sea.  I have often written them down.  I will not be ashamed to repeat them here, for good things never grow old.  There was the Wave that brings good tidings, and the Wave that breaks on the shore, and the Wave of the island, and the Wave that helps, and the Wave that lifts forrard, the kindly Wave and the youngest Wave, and Amathea the Wave with bright hair, all the waves that come up round Thetis in her train when she rises from the side of the old man, her father, where he sits on his throne in the depth of the sea; when she comes up cleaving the water and appears to her sons in the upper world.

The Wight showed clear before me.  I was certain with the tide of making the Horse Buoy and Spithead while it was yet afternoon, and before the plenitude of that light and movement should have left me.  I settled down to so much and such exalted delight as to a settled task.  I lit my pipe for a further companion (since it was good to add even to so many).  I kept my right shoulder only against the tiller, for the pressure was now steady and sound.  I felt the wind grow heavy and equable, and I caught over my shoulder the merry wake of this very honest moving home of mine as she breasted and hissed through the sea.

Here, then, was the proper end of a long cruise.  It was springtime, and the season for work on land.  I had been told so by the heartening wind.  And as I went still westward, remembering the duties of the land, the sails still held full, the sheets and the weather shrouds still stood taut and straining, and the little clatter of the broken water spoke along the lee rail.  And so the ship sailed on.

     [Greek:  ’En d thnemos presen mxson istion, thmphi de kuma]
     [Greek:  Sseire porphureon megal’ iache, neos iouses.]

THE CANIGOU

A man might discuss with himself what it was that made certain great sights of the world famous, and what it is that keeps others hidden.  This would be especially interesting in the case of mountains.  For there is no doubt that there is a modern attraction in mountains which may not endure, but which is almost as intense in our generation as it was in that of our fathers.  The emotion produced by great height and by the something unique and inspiring which distinguishes a mountain from a hill has bitten deeply into the modern mind.  Yet there are some of the most astounding visions of this sort in Europe which are, and will probably remain, unemphasised for travellers.