driven over the sea in a cloud of haze, the ships rolled and
pitched heavily, and at intervals long slants and flaws of light
made mountain-steeps of communication between the ocean and the
sky. A walk of ten miles brought me to a seaside town without a
cliff, which, like the town I had come from, was out of the season
too. Half of the houses were shut up; half of the other half were
to let; the town might have done as much business as it was doing
then, if it had been at the bottom of the sea. Nobody seemed to
flourish save the attorney; his clerk's pen was going in the bow-
window of his wooden house; his brass door-plate alone was free
from salt, and had been polished up that morning. On the beach,
among the rough buggers and capstans, groups of storm-beaten
boatmen, like a sort of marine monsters, watched under the lee of
those objects, or stood leaning forward against the wind, looking
out through battered spy-glasses. The parlour bell in the Admiral
Benbow had grown so flat with being out of the season, that neither
could I hear it ring when I pulled the handle for lunch, nor could
the young woman in black stockings and strong shoes, who acted as
waiter out of the season, until it had been tinkled three times.

Admiral Benbow's cheese was out of the season, but his home-made
bread was good, and his beer was perfect. Deluded by some earlier
spring day which had been warm and sunny, the Admiral had cleared
the firing out of his parlour stove, and had put some flower-pots
in - which was amiable and hopeful in the Admiral, but not
judicious: the room being, at that present visiting, transcendantly
cold. I therefore took the liberty of peeping out across a little
stone passage into the Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing a high settle
with its back towards me drawn out in front of the Admiral's
kitchen fire, I strolled in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and