ring
and calling? only of darkness were these forbidding shadows?

I looked up sharply at the doctor from such pensive embroidery, and
found him as far away as I. He nodded and smiled, and we shook hands
on the bank in the thick mist.

"There's biscuits and a little meat, wine, and fruit," he said in an
undertone. "God be with you, sir! I sadly mistrust the future. ...
'Tis ever my way, at parting."

We said good-bye again, to the dream-cry of some little fluttering
creature of the rushes. And well before dawn I was floating midstream,
my friend a memory, Rosinante in clover, and my travels, so far as
this brief narrative will tell, nearly ended.

I saw nothing but a few long-haired, grazing cattle on my voyage, that
eyed me but cursorily. I passed unmolested among the waterfowl,
between the never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetened
with storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. When
too the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank and
await the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I began to
approach the sea.

I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with how
broad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match,
nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirs
beneath all music--the deep's loud-falling billow.

I pushed ashore, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ash
tree at the waterside. And after scrambling some little distance over
dunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like a
Greek before the sea.

Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam. Far to either side
of me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almost
violet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.

I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart. Its light, salt
airs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of a
region I could remember only as one who, remembering that he has
dreamed, remembers nothing more. Larks rose, singing, behind me. In a
calm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace. Here
indeed was solitude!

It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that I
thought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of the
horns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city. If
I gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine above
the azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again