s 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 a reef in Sandag
Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of
the foreign brig--was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn
by a man of my own period in the world's history, hearing the same news
from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the
same temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary
thoughts; my uncle's words, 'the dead are down there,' echoed in my ears;
and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strong
repugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks.

A great change