From the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes a circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right down to her water-line; and these very eyes which follow this writing have counted in their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic ring, not very far from the Azores — ships more or less tall. There were hardly two of them heading exactly the same way, as if each had meditated¹ breaking out of the enchanted² circle at a different point of the compass. But the spell of the calm is a strong magic. The following day still saw them scattered³ within sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple⁵ that ran very blue on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together. For this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was heading the flight. One could have imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall, leaving a scent⁶ of lemons and oranges in her wake.

The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads — seven at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks⁸, hull⁹ down, beyond the magic ring of the horizon. The spell of the fair wind has a subtle power to scatter⁴ a white-winged company of ships looking all the same way, each with its white fillet of tumbling foam¹⁰ under the bow. It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind that is the great separator.

The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a

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