"
"Which way did you walk?" said yet another of my companions.
"Young man," said the stranger, with solemnity, "I walked westward
toward the setting sun ... I walked and I walked and I walked, day after
day and year after year. Whenever I came to the seacoast I would take
work on board a ship--and remember it is always easy to get work if you
will take the wages that are offered, and always difficult to get it if
you will not. Well, then, I went in this way through all known lands and
over all known seas, until at last I came to the shore of a sea beyond
which (so the people told me who lived there) there was no further
shore. 'I cannot help that,' said I; 'I have not yet come to the End of
the World, and it is common sense that such a lot of water must have
something at the back of it to hold it up; besides which there is a
strong wind blowing out of the gates of the west and from the sunset.
Now that wind must rise somewhere, and I am going on to see where it
rises.' One of them was kind enough to lend me a boat with oars; I
thanked him prettily, and then I set out to row toward the End of the
World, taking with me two or three days' provisions.
"When I had rowed a long time I went asleep, and when I woke up next
morning I rowed again all day until the second night I went to sleep. On
the third day I rowed again: a little before sunset on the third day I
saw before me high hills, all in peaks like a great saw.
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