The hubbub sank away. The tide came in with a quiet rhyme. Morning sand shone in a great golden stillness. Village and sea and boats held in contentment. The fisher folk sat or stood, listening. The speaker was speaking, Montjoy a pilgrim, listening, agreeing. Quiet and the salt air and the sun. Quietness and certitude. I am, from everlasting to everlasting.
The gold-brown man ceased his speaking or his answering questions, for it had been largely questioning and answering. Lifting a bundle that lay beside him he looked to a league-distant point striking out into the sea, where seemed more houses than were here. One of the fishermen spoke. “I’ll take you, master, in the Nightingale.”
The small sailboat carried the palmer also,—the palmer and Richard the smith and two boatmen. The latter were still for questions. “You have been to Jerusalem? What like is it?”
“It is so and so,” answered the palmer. “But I say with this man, ‘Let us now build the New Jerusalem!’”
The smith turned to him, “There is something in your voice, friend—”
The red sail and the blue sea, the salt, and the divine fresh morning. “Is there?” answered Montjoy. “And there is something in yours—”
The other said in English, “Naught’s impossible ever! A long pilgrimage from an English castle?”
“Aye, brother! At Avignon I was shown a great cup made in Paris fifteen years ago by the English goldsmith, Englefield.”
The town in front of them was growing larger. The younger boatman had still his questions about Galilee and Olivet. The fresh wind carried the boat fast. Here was a long wharf and the town, and quitting the Nightingale, and thanks and partings with the boatmen, then a street and tall houses heaping toward a castle on the hill. “The lady of the castle loveth pilgrims,” said Englefield. “And yonder is the great house of the Franciscans.”