The deck was now crowded with people, most of whom were coming back
to their own country after an exile in Africa among un-Christian and
dangerous things. The little children who had not yet known Europe,
having been born beyond the sea, were full of wonder; but their
parents, who knew the shortness of human life and its trouble, were
happy because they had come back at last and saw before them the
known jetties and the familiar hills of home. As I was surrounded by
so much happiness, I myself felt as though I had come to the end of
a long journey and was reaching my own place, though I was, in
reality, bound for Barcelona, and after that up northward through
the Cerdagne, and after that to Perigord, and after that to the
Channel, and so to Sussex, where all journeys end.
The harbour had about it that Mediterranean-go-as-you-please which
everywhere in the Mediterranean distinguishes harbours. It was as
though the men of that sea had said: "It never blows for long: let
us build ourselves a rough refuge and to-morrow sail away." We
neared this harbour, but we flew no flag and made no signal. Beneath
us the water was so clear that all one need have done to have
brought the vessel in if one had not known the channel would have
been to lean over the side and to keep the boy at the helm off the
very evident shallows and the crusted rocks by gestures of one's
hands, for the fairway was like a trench, deep and blue.
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