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.