The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening
light in the silence that is never known on land--the silence before
sunrise, in a calm at sea.

Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the
motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing
moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the
eastward sea. By fine gradations, the airy veil of morning thinned in
substance as it rose--thinned, till there dawned through it in the first
rays of sunlight the tall white sails of a Schooner Yacht.

From stem to stern silence possessed the vessel--as silence possessed
the sea.

But one living creature was on deck--the man at the helm, dozing
peaceably with his arm over the useless tiller. Minute by minute the
light grew, and the heat grew with it; and still the helmsman slumbered,
the heavy sails hung noiseless, the quiet water lay sleeping against
the vessel's sides. The whole orb of the sun was visible above the
water-line, when the first sound pierced its way through the morning
silence. From far off over the shining white ocean, the cry of a
sea-bird reached the yacht on a sudden out of the last airy circles of
the waning mist.

The sleeper at the helm woke; looked up at the idle sails, and yawned
in sympathy with them; looked out at the sea on either side of him, and
shook his head obstinately at the superior obstinacy of the calm.

"Blow, my little breeze!" said the man, whistling the sailor's