The sun broke through the sea-fog around us while I stripped; it
shone, as I balanced myself for the plunge, on the broad wings of a
heron flapping out from the wood's blue shadow; it shone on the
scales of the fish struggling and gasping under the thwarts.
Divine the river was, divine the morning, divine the moment--the last
of my boyhood.

Souse I plunged and deep, with wide-open eyes, chose out and grasped
my pebble, and rose to the surface holding it high as though it had
been a gem. The sound of the splash was in my ears and the echo of
my own laugh, but with it there mingled a cry from Billy Priske, and
shaking the water out of my eyes I saw him erect in the stern-sheets
and astare at a vision parting the fog--the vision of a tall
fore-and-aft sail, golden-grey against the sunlight, and above the
sail a foot or two of a stout pole-mast, and above the mast a gilded
truck and weather-vane with a tail of scarlet bunting. So closely
the fog hung about her that for a second I took her to be a cutter;
and then a second sail crept through the curtain, and I recognized
her for the _Gauntlet_ ketch, Port of Falmouth, Captain Jo Pomery,
returned from six months' foreign. I announced her to Billy with a
shout.

"As if a man couldn' tell that!" answered Billy, removing his cap and
rubbing the back of his head. "What brings her in here, that's what
I'm askin'."

"Belike," said I, scrambling over the gunwale, "the man has lost his
bearings in this fog, and mistakes Helford for Falmouth entrance."