The Coming of the Ship is the turning point that ends Almustafa’s twelve-year wait in Orphalese and makes his departure unavoidable. On the seventh day of Ielool, he sees his returning ship through the mist; what follows is not an immediate embarkation but a passage into the city, where the people meet him in tears and Almitra recognizes that the call he has awaited now requires him to leave.

The Ship Appears

Almustafa has waited twelve years in Orphalese for the ship that is to bear him back to the isle of his birth. The text fixes the moment of its return precisely: in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbs the hill beyond the city walls and looks seaward. There, coming with the mist, is the ship. The long wait gives the sight its force: this is not an unexpected visitor or an abstract possibility, but the arrival of the vessel for which he has remained in the city.

The view opens a private inward moment before the public farewell begins. At the sight of the ship, the gates of Almustafa’s heart are flung open, and his joy flies far over the sea. He then closes his eyes and prays in the silences of his soul. The sequence moves from looking outward, across the water, to an inward response that he does not voice aloud. The ship is visible; the full meaning of the moment remains, at first, within him.

The Call and the Cost of Staying

Almustafa later makes clear that the ship’s arrival has become a summons. He says that he cannot tarry longer: the sea calls all things to itself, and he must embark. His departure is therefore presented not simply as the fulfillment of a wish to return to his birthplace, but as an answer to a call that he understands as larger than his own preference.

That call also gives staying a cost. Almustafa says that to remain, even while the hours burn through the night, would be to freeze, crystallize, and become bound in a mould. The image sets movement against fixed form: the sea draws him onward, while continued residence would harden what is alive. His words establish the urgency of departure without making the ship’s arrival a simple moment of triumph. Joy at seeing the vessel coexists with the knowledge that he must leave the city and its people.

The City Meets Him

When Almustafa enters the city, the people come out to meet him, crying as with one voice. The welcome is collective, but it carries the force of grief as well as recognition: the ship’s return has changed his long-awaited homecoming into the occasion for a separation. The elders stand forth to address him, placing the first public response in the hands of the city’s representatives.

Almustafa does not answer them. He only bends his head, and those standing near see tears fall upon his breast. His silence contrasts with the people’s unified cry and the elders’ formal address. Rather than explaining himself at once, he responds bodily; the tears make visible an emotion that the earlier inward prayer had kept private. He and the people then proceed toward the great square before the temple. The sighting on the hill thus leads into a shared movement through the city, from the sea-facing edge to a public gathering place.

Almitra Recognizes the Moment

At the sanctuary, a woman named Almitra comes out to meet them. She is a seeress, and she had sought and believed in Almustafa when he had been in the city for only a day. Her presence links the departure to the beginning of his time in Orphalese: she belongs to the history of his arrival there, but now she addresses the moment when that stay must end.

Almitra names the distance he has searched and the purpose of his waiting. She calls him a prophet of God, says he has long sought his ship, and recognizes that it has now come and that he must go. Her words make explicit what the ship’s appearance, Almustafa’s tears, and his refusal to tarry have already set in motion. The event closes the interval of waiting, but the departure itself remains ahead: the people have accompanied him to the square, and Almitra has spoken the truth of the summons aloud. The ship’s arrival is decisive because it turns private expectation into public farewell.