between him and it. Far down, at the low pier, he saw a little boat
belonging to a retired ship-captain. The oars were on board; and the owner
and some one with him were walking towards the boat. Now the captain had
promised to take him with him some day.

"He was half-way down the road a moment after the words of permission had
left his mother's lips, and was waiting at the boat when the two men came
up. They readily agreed to let him go with them. They were going to row to
a village on the opposite side of the bay, and return in the evening.
Herbert was speechless with delight. They got in, the boat heaving beneath
them, unmoored and pushed off. This suspension between sea and sky was a
new sensation to Herbert; for when he looked down, his eye did not repose
on the surface, but penetrated far into a clear green abyss, where the
power of vision seemed rather to vanish than be arrested. When he looked
up, the shore was behind them; and he knew, for the first time, what it
was to look at the land as he had looked at the sea; to regard the land,
in its turn, as a _phenomenon_--observing it apart from himself.

"Running along the shore like a little bird, he saw the child of the sea;
and, further to the right, the peak on which she had stood in the sunset,
and into whose mysterious chamber she had led him. The captain here put a
pocket-telescope into his hand; and with this annihilator of space he made
new discoveries. He saw a little window in the cliff, doubtless the same
from which he had looked out on the dim sea; and then perceived that the
front of the cliff, in that part, was no rock, but a wall, regularly and
strongly built. It was evidently the remains of an old fortress. The front
foundation had been laid in the rocks of the shore; the cliff had then
been faced up with masonry; and behind chambers had been cut in the rock;
into one of which Herbert had descended a ruined spiral stair. The castle
itself, which had stood on the top, had mouldered away, leaving only a