“I suppose you dropped her at some port on the way.”
“We haven't smelled harbor mud since we left Southampton Water,” said the skipper. “You're making a mistake, mister. Why, you look as if you thought I was lying. Take a look at the ship's articles, then, if you don't believe me. Stands to reason, doesn't it, that if I had a woman aboard her name would be on the articles?”
Peter returned to the shore, bitterly disappointed and hardly convinced that he had been mistaken. He booked a passage on the next homeward-bound steamer. On the homeward voyage he fell in love with an old lady, one of those women whose personality is so magnetic that they can draw the innermost secrets out of a young man's heart. One evening, when the sea was ablaze with splendor under the moon, he told her of the Sea Maid, and found it eased his longing to talk of her. The old lady understood.
“You'll see your Sea Maid again,” she said. “I'm sure of it. But perhaps not in this life.”
But Peter refused to give up hope of seeing the Sea Maid in the flesh. When he got back to London he sought an interview with one of the most eminent members of the Royal Geographical Society.
“I want you to tell me where Hi-Brasil is,” he said. “I want to go there.”
“Then you'll have to wait till you die,” said the geographer with a laugh.
“What do you mean?”
“Hi-Brasil is a purely mythical island, like St. Brendan's, The Fortunate Islands, Avalon, and Lyonnesse, that ancient and medieval geographers supposed to be somewhere out in the Atlantic. They've served their purpose. If nobody had ever believed in them it is probable that America would not have been discovered yet. The myth of Hi-Brasil's existence took a long time to die. Venetian geographers of the Middle Ages supposed it to be somewhere near the Azores, and until 1830 Purdy's chart of the Atlantic marked 'Brasil Rock (High)' in latitude fifty-one degrees ten minutes north, and longitude fifteen degrees fifty minutes west—that is, about two hundred miles westward of the Irish coast.”