The boat they came in was indeed large. I know I counted at least a dozen sails. It carried a couple of jibs, three sails on each of its big masts, and staysails. I had never seen a boat big enough to set staysails between its masts before, so I am sure of those.

Sinew came back with the telescope. I asked whether he wanted the first look, and he sneered at me. It was always a mistake to try to treat him with any courtesy in those days, and I could have kicked myself for it. I put the telescope to my eye, wondering what Sinew was doing the second I could no longer watch him.

It was a good instrument, made in Dorp they said, where they are good sailors and grind good lenses. (We were good sailors in New Viron, too-or thought we were-but did not grind lenses at all.) Through it I could see the faces at the gunwale, all looking toward Tail Bay, for which their boat was plainly making. Its hull was white above and black below-I recall that, too. Here on Blue the sea is silver where it is not so dark a blue that it seems it might dye cloth, not at all like Lake Limna at home where the waves were nearly always green.

I had become used to Blue’s blue and silver sea long ago, of course. Perhaps I only think of it now because we are so far from it here in Gaon; but it seems to me, as I sit here to write at this beautifully inlaid table the Gaonese have provided for me, that I saw it then through the glass as though it were new, that there was some magic carried in the big black and white boat that made Blue new to me again. Perhaps there was, for boats are magic-living things that ordinary men like me can shape from wood and iron.