Yet when we came upon the Ship, toward evening, I forgot my weariness.
And after an amazed volley of oaths,
our mariners rested silent on their pikes.
The Hisagazi,
never talkative,
crouched low in token of awe.
Only Guzan remained erect among them.
I glimpsed his expression as he started at the marvel.
It was a look of lust.
Wild was that place.
We had gone above timberline.
The land was a green sea below us, edged with silvery ocean.
Here we stood among tumbled black boulders,
cinders and spongy tufa underfoot.
The mountains rose in steeps and scarps and ravines,
on to snows and smoke,
which rose another mile into a pale chilly sky.
And here stood the Ship.
And the Ship was beauty.
I remember.
Its length
– height, rather, since it stood on its tail
– it was about equal to our caravel,
in form not unlike a lance head,
in color a shining white,
unvarnished after forty years.
That was all.
But words are paltry, my lords.
What can they show of clean soaring curves,
of iridescence on burnished metal,
of a thing which was proud and lovely and in its very shape aquiver to be off?
How can I conjure back the glamour which hazed that Ship whose keel had cloven starlight?
– Poul Anderson
Illustration by Frank Kelly Freas (p. 24)
