The summer's day had been buried in Charlemagne splendors of purple and gold; the Spanish sable of the night glittered with its jewel-belt of stars. The young moon had not yet lifted the silver horns of her Moslem standard in the far east. We were sailing over lukewarm waves, rising and falling softly as the breast of a sleeper; winds from the south bore to us a drowsy perfume of lemon-blossoms; and the yellow lights among the citron trees seemed, as we rocked upon the long swell, like the stars of Joseph's dream doing obeisance. Far beyond them a giant pharos glared at us with its single Cyclopean eye of bloodshot fire, dyeing the face of the pilot crimson as a pomegranate. At intervals the sea amorously lipped the smooth flanks of the vessel with a sharp sound; and ghostly fires played about our prow. Seated upon a coil of rope a guitarrista sang, improvising as he sang, one of those sweetly monotonous ballads which the Andalusian gypsies term soleariyas. Even now the rich tones of that solitary voice vibrate in our memory, almost as on that perfumed sea, under the light of summer stars:
Sera,
Para mi er mayo delirio
Berte y no poerte habla.
Gacho.
Gacho que no hab ya motas
Es un barco sin timon.
Por ti,
Las horitas e la noche
Me las paso sin dormi.
Sereno,
No de oste la boz tan arta
Que quieo dormi y no pueo.
Marina,
Con que te lavas la cara
Que la tienes tan dibina?
Why he told me his story I know not: I know only that our hearts understood each other.
"Of my mother," he said, "I knew little when a child; I only remember her in memories vague as dreams, and perhaps in dreams also. For there are years of our childhood so mingled with dreams that we cannot discern through memory the shadow from the substance. But in those times I was forever haunted by a voice that spoke a tongue only familiar to me in after years, and by a face I do not ever remember to have kissed.
"A clear, dark face, strong and delicate, with sharp crescent brows and singularly large eyes, liquidly black, bending over me in my sleep—the face of a tall woman. There was something savage even in the tenderness of the great luminous eyes—such a look as the hunter finds in the eyes of fierce birds when he climbs to their nests above the clouds; and this dark dream-face filled me with strange love and fear. The hair, flowing back from her temples in long ripples of jet, was confined by a broad silver comb curved and gleaming like a new moon.
"And at last when these dreams came upon me, and the half-fierce, loving eyes looked upon me in the night, I would awake and go out under the stars and sob.
"A vast unrest possessed me; a new heat throbbed in my veins, and I heard forever flute-tones of a strange voice, speaking in an unknown tongue; but far, far off, like the sounds of words broken and borne away in fragments by some wandering wind.
"Ocean breezes sang in my ears the song of waves—of waves chanting the deep hymn that no musician can learn—the mystic hymn whereof no human ear may ever discern the words—the magical hymn that is older than the world, and weirder than the moon.
"The winds of the woods bore me odors of tears of spicy gums and the sounds of bird-voices sweeter than the plaint of running water, and whispers of shaking shadows, and the refrain of that mighty harp-song which the pines sing, and the vaporous souls of flowers, and the mysteries of succubus-vines that strangle the oaks with love.
"Winds also, piercing and cold as Northern eyes, came to me from the abysses of the rocks, and from peaks whose ermine of snow has never since the being of the world felt the pressure of a bird's foot; and they sang Runic chants of mountain freedom, where the lightnings cross their flickerings. And with these winds came also shadows of birds, far circling above me, with eyes fierce and beautiful as the eyes of my dream.