Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/190

 old moon, blown landward by little winds of dawn, making port on the shore of "hither Manomet." In the velvety blackness of this ultimate hour of night the slender sail curved sweetly backward toward the sea, and the shallop seemed drawn to the land by a lodestone, as was the ship of Sinbad the Sailor, and when it magically climbed the dark headland and sailed away into the sky above it drew out of the sea behind it the first light of glorious morning. From Manomet head to the Gurnet the horizon showed a level sea line of palest garnet that deepened, moment by moment, till the coming sun arched it with rose and bounded from it, a flattened globule of ruby fire. I like to think that the path of gold with which the sun glorified the stippled steel of the sea was the very one by which the first Mayflower came in from Provincetown, the sails nobly set and the ship pressing onward to that memorable anchorage within the protecting white arm of the sandspit.

I like to think that the sweet curve of the old moon's slender sail sways in by Manomet each month in loving remembrance of that other shallop that so magically won by the roar of the breakers