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The White Ship
By H. P. Lovecraft
I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept before
me. Far from the shore stands the grey lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when
the tide is low, but unseen when the tide is high. Past that beacon for a century have swept
the majestic barques of the seven seas. In the days of my grandfather there were many; in the
days of my father not so many; and now there are so few that I sometimes feel strangely alone,
as though I were the last man on our planet.
From far shores came those white-sailed argosies of old; from far Eastern shores
where warm suns shine and sweet odours linger about strange gardens and gay temples. The old
captains of the sea came often to my grandfather and told him of these things, which in turn
he told to my father, and my father told to me in the long autumn evenings when the wind howled
eerily from the East. And I have read more of these things, and of many things besides, in the
books men gave me when I was young and filled with wonder.
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret
lore of ocean. Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean
is not silent. All my days have I watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At first
it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years
it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange and more distant in
space and in time. Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant
me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown
clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And these glimpses have
been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for
ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of
Time.
Out of the South it was that the White Ship used to come when the moon was
full and high in the heavens. Out of the South it would glide very smoothly and silently over
the sea. And whether the sea was rough or calm, and whether the wind was friendly or adverse,
it would always glide smoothly and silently, its sails distant and its long strange tiers of
oars moving rhythmically. One night I espied upon the deck a man, bearded and robed, and he
seemed to beckon me to embark for fair unknown shores. Many times afterward I saw him under
the full moon, and ever did he beckon me.
Very brightly did the moon shine on the night I answered the call, and I walked
out over the waters to the White Ship on a bridge of moonbeams. The man who had beckoned now
spoke a welcome to me in a soft language I seemed to know well, and the hours were filled with
soft songs of the oarsmen as we glided away into a mysterious South, golden with the glow of
that full, mellow moon.
And when the day dawned, rosy and effulgent, I beheld the green shore of far
lands, bright and beautiful, and to me unknown. Up from the sea rose lordly terraces of verdure,
tree-studded, and shewing here and there the gleaming white roofs and colonnades of strange
temples. As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of
Zar, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten.
And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights
before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent
depths of ocean. There too were forms and fantasies more splendid than any I had ever known;
the visions of young poets who died in want before the world could learn of what they had seen
and dreamed. But we did not set foot upon the sloping meadows of Zar, for it is told that he
who treads them may nevermore