heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as
much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. The
tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half;
there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my
feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to
keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little
from the land--and as I stood upon the beach and observed it
dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over
it.

So orderly, so quiet, so regular--the rising and falling of the
Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat--the turning of the
windlass--the coming in of the tide--that I myself seemed, to my
own thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen
it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles
to get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, and
struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits;
meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle
to market: noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their
unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having
windy weather suggested by every cotter's little rick, with its
thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping
compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift
of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was
coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted
company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the
placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment
nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as
the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the
regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight