Longren, an introverted and unsociable person, lived by the manufacture and sale of models of sailing ships and steamboats. Fellow countrymen did not really like the former sailor, especially after one incident.
Once, during a severe storm, the shopkeeper and innkeeper Menners was carried away in his boat far into the sea. The only witness to what happened was Longren. He quietly smoked a pipe, watching Menners call to him in vain. Only when it became apparent that he could no longer be saved, Longren shouted to him that in the same way, Mary asked his fellow villager for help, but did not receive it.
On the sixth day, the shopkeeper picked up a steamboat among the waves, and before death he told about the culprit of his death.
He did not tell only about how five years ago Longren's wife turned to him with a request to give a little loan. She just gave birth to baby Assol, the birth was not easy, and almost all of her money went for treatment, and her husband had not yet returned from swimming. Menners advised not to be touchy, then he is ready to help. In bad weather, the unfortunate woman went to the city to lay a ring, caught a cold and died of pneumonia. So Longren remained a widower with his daughter in his arms and could no longer go to sea.
Whatever it was, and the news of such a demonstrative inaction of Longren struck the villagers more than if he drowned a man with his own hands. The hostility turned into almost hatred and also turned to the innocent Assol, who grew up alone with her fantasies and dreams and as if she needed neither her peers nor friends. Her father replaced her mother, and friends, and countrymen.
Once, when Assol was eight years old, he sent her to the city with new toys, among which was a miniature yacht with scarlet silk sails. The girl lowered the boat into the creek. The stream carried him and carried him to the mouth, where she saw a stranger holding her boat in her hands. It was old Aigle, a collector of legends and fairy tales. He gave the toy to Assol and told that years would pass and the prince would sail for her on the same ship under red sails and take her to a distant land.
The girl told her father about it. Unfortunately, the beggar, accidentally hearing her story, spread the rumor about the ship and the overseas prince throughout Caperna. Now the children shouted after her: “Hey, gallows! Red sails sail! ” So she came across as crazy.
Arthur Gray, the only offspring of a noble and rich family, grew up not in a hut, but in a family castle, in an atmosphere of predetermination of every present and future step. This, however, was a boy with a very lively soul, ready to fulfill his own life mission. He was decisive and fearless.
The guardian of their wine cellar, Polishchock, told him that in one place two barrels of Alicante from the time of Cromwell are buried and its color is darker than cherry, and it is thick as good cream. The barrels are made of ebony, and on them are double copper hoops on which it says: "Gray will drink me when he is in paradise." No one has tried or will try this wine. “I will drink it,” Gray said, stamping his foot, and clenched his hand into a fist: “Paradise?” He's here!.."
For all that, he was extremely responsive to other people's misfortune, and his sympathy always poured out into real help.
In the castle library he was struck by a picture of some famous marine painter. She helped him understand herself. Gray secretly left the house and entered the Anselm schooner. Captain Gop was a kind man, but a stern sailor. Having appreciated the mind, perseverance and love for the sea of a young sailor, Gop decided to “make a captain out of a puppy”: to introduce navigation, maritime law, a mission and bookkeeping. At the age of twenty, Gray bought the three-masted galliot "Secret" and sailed on it for four years. Fate brought him to Liss, an hour and a half walk from which Caperna was located.
With the onset of darkness, together with the sailor Letika Gray, taking fishing rods, sailed on a boat in search of a suitable place for fishing. Under the cliff beyond Caperna, they left the boat and lit a fire. Letika went fishing, and Gray lay down by the fire. In the morning he went to wander, when suddenly in the thicket he saw Assol sleeping. He stared at the girl who struck him for a long time, and when he left, he removed an old ring from his finger and put it on her little finger.
Then she and Letika reached the Menners Inn, where the young Hean Menners was now hosting. He said that Assol was crazy, dreaming of a prince and a ship with red sails, that her father was the culprit of the death of the older Menners and a terrible person. Doubts about the veracity of this information intensified when a drunk coal miner assured that the innkeeper was lying. Gray and without assistance he managed to understand something in this extraordinary girl. She knew life within the limits of her experience, but in addition she saw in phenomena a different meaning, making many subtle discoveries, incomprehensible and unnecessary to the inhabitants of Caperna.
The captain in many ways was himself the same, a little out of this world. He went to Liss and found scarlet silk in one of the shops. In the city, he met an old acquaintance - a wandering musician Zimmer - and asked in the evening to arrive at the Secret with his orchestra.
The red sails perplexed the team, as did the order to advance to Caperna. Nevertheless, in the morning the Secret came out under red sails and by noon was already in mind Caperna.
Assol was shocked by the sight of a white ship with red sails, from which the music poured from the deck. She rushed to the sea, where the inhabitants of Caperna had already gathered. When Assol appeared, everyone fell silent and parted. The boat, in which Gray stood, separated from the ship and headed for the shore. After a while, Assol was already in the cabin. Everything happened as the old man predicted.
On the same day, a barrel of centennial wine was opened, which no one had ever drunk before, and the next morning the ship was already far from Caperna, carrying the crew defeated by the unusual wine of Gray. Only Zimmer did not sleep. He played his cello quietly and thought about happiness.
