purple mark appeared, like a bruise; or there floated an entire emerald
tinged with yellow. He plunged. He gulped in water, spat it out, struck
with his right arm, struck with his left, was towed by a rope, gasped,
splashed, and was hauled on board.

The seat in the boat was positively hot, and the sun warmed his back as
he sat naked with a towel in his hand, looking at the Scilly Isles
which--confound it! the sail flapped. Shakespeare was knocked overboard.
There you could see him floating merrily away, with all his pages
ruffling innumerably; and then he went under.

Strangely enough, you could smell violets, or if violets were impossible
in July, they must grow something very pungent on the mainland then. The
mainland, not so very far off--you could see clefts in the cliffs, white
cottages, smoke going up--wore an extraordinary look of calm, of sunny
peace, as if wisdom and piety had descended upon the dwellers there. Now
a cry sounded, as of a man calling pilchards in a main street. It wore
an extraordinary look of piety and peace, as if old men smoked by the
door, and girls stood, hands on hips, at the well, and horses stood; as
if the end of the world had come, and cabbage fields and stone walls,
and coast-guard stations, and, above all, the white sand bays with the
waves breaking unseen by any one, rose to heaven in a kind of ecstasy.

But imperceptibly the cottage smoke droops, has the look of a mourning
emblem, a flag floating its caress over a grave. The gulls, making their
broad flight and then riding at peace, seem to mark the grave.

No doubt if this were Italy, Greece, or even the shores of Spain,
sadness would be routed by strangeness and excitement and the nudge of a
classical education. But the Cornish hills have stark chimneys standing