A little way along the Far Shore, past where the Sleepy Lighthouse turned its slow gold light, Marlow and the grey hare came to a small, quiet harbour.
It was the kind of harbour where nothing was in a hurry. A low stone wall curved out into the water like a sleepy arm, and inside its bend the sea lay as smooth and dark as a folded blanket.
"This is where the little boats come home," said the grey hare softly. "Watch."
So Marlow watched.
One by one, out of the soft evening, the small boats were coming in. There was a round blue boat and a narrow green one, a fishing boat with a patched red sail, and a tiny white boat hardly bigger than a bathtub. They had been out all day on the wide water, and now, as the last of the light went golden and then grey, they came drifting home.
None of them rowed hard. None of them raced. They simply turned toward the harbour, the way you turn toward your own warm bed at the end of a long day, and let the gentle tide carry them in.
Marlow watched the round blue boat slide up to the wall. A pair of soft hands looped its rope once, twice, around a worn old post, and tied it with a sleepy knot. Then the boat sighed down into the still water and began, very slowly, to rock.
One after another, all the little boats came in and were tied up safe. The green one. The red-sailed one. The tiny white one last of all, bobbing like a duckling to its place by the wall.
And once each boat was home, it did the same gentle thing. It rocked. Just a little. This way, and then that way. The way a cradle rocks. The way the grey hare's paw might pat, ever so softly, on a small warm back.
The whole harbour rocked together, slow and even, and the water made a sound so quiet you had to go still inside to hear it — a small lapping hush, hush, hush against the stones.
"Every boat that goes out comes home again," the grey hare whispered. "It does its day on the wide water, and then it comes back to the quiet wall, and it rests. That is all it has to do now. Just rest, and rock, and be tied up safe."
Marlow felt his own eyes growing heavy as the harbour swayed. He thought how nice it was that the boats did not have to do anything more tonight. They did not have to sail. They did not have to find their way. They were home, and the rope was tied, and the water would rock them until morning.
He lay back against the warm stone of the wall, and the grey hare settled close beside him.
Hush, said the water. Hush, hush.
The little boats rocked, slower and slower and slower.
And Marlow, tied up safe in the harbour of the night, let himself rock too — gently, gently, all the way down into sleep.
Far out past the harbour wall the morning was waiting, the way it always waited: patient, and kind, and in no hurry at all to come.