my
mind. But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I
stooped forward and plunged into the sea.

It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew
so thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself by
grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting
my feet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear
sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks,
scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the
tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but
the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the
terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths
as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped
below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all
swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished;
and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural
rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole
tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my
eyes in a glory of crimson.

I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my
feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I
stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an
iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the
heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I
held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like
the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's
hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot
that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving
decks--the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair
and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not
like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the
great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and
treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the
seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the
dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her
battlements--that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now