The Seaboard Parish Volume 3 by George MacDonald
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page 17 of 188 (09%)
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waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the left a man
who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose, the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the thinner element. I thanked God for his glory. "O, papa, it's so jolly--so jolly!" shouted the children as I passed them again. "What is it that's so jolly, Charlie?" I asked. "My castle," screeched Harry in reply; "only it's tumbled down. The water _would_ keep coming in underneath." "I tried to stop it with a newspaper," cried Charlie, "but it wouldn't. So we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch." "We blew it up rather than surrender," said Dora. "We did; only Harry always forgets, and says it was the water did it." I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on the |
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