resting after a long journey. And of all the ships in sight, near and
far, each was provided with a man, the man without whom the finest ship
is a dead thing, a floating and purposeless log.

After his one glance at the roadstead he went on, since there was
nothing to turn back for, and the time must be got through somehow. The
avenues of big trees ran straight over the Esplanade, cutting each other
at diverse angles, columnar below and luxuriant above. The interlaced
boughs high up there seemed to slumber; not a leaf stirred overhead:
and the reedy cast-iron lampposts in the middle of the road, gilt like
scepters, diminished in a long perspective, with their globes of white
porcelain atop, resembling a barbarous decoration of ostriches' eggs
displayed in a row. The flaming sky kindled a tiny crimson spark upon
the glistening surface of each glassy shell.

With his chin sunk a little, his hands behind his back, and the end of
his stick marking the gravel with a faint wavering line at his heels,
Captain Whalley reflected that if a ship without a man was like a body
without a soul, a sailor without a ship was of not much more account
in this world than an aimless log adrift upon the sea. The log might be
sound enough by itself, tough of fiber, and hard to destroy--but what of
that! And a sudden sense of irremediable idleness weighted his feet like
a great fatigue.

A succession of open carriages came bowling along the newly opened
sea-road. You could see across the wide grass-plots the discs of
vibration made by the spokes. The bright domes of the parasols swayed
lightly outwards like full-blown blossoms on the rim of a vase; and
the quiet sheet of dark-blue water, crossed by a bar of purple, made a
background for the spinning wheels and the high action of the horses,