This new land, which he and his fellow-men coveted, why was it so desired?
Only that over it, as over all the world behind it, there might be builded homes.

For, as he reflected, the adventurers of the earth had always been also the home-builders; and there followed for him the bitter personal corollary that all his adventure was come to naught if there could be no home as its ultimate reward.

His vague eye swam over the wide, gray sea about him, and to himself he seemed adrift, unanchored and with no chart of life..