y for a foot or two, into the open air, and prognosticated pleasant
things about the course of the world. As for the confidences and
expressions of love that were heard not only in cornfields but in
lamplit rooms, where the windows opened on the garden, and men with
cigars kissed women with grey hairs, they were not to be counted. Some
said that the sky was an emblem of the life to come. Long-tailed birds
clattered and screamed, and crossed from wood to wood, with golden eyes
in their plumage.

But while all this went on by land, very few people thought about the
sea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm; and there was no
need, as there is in many houses when the creeper taps on the bedroom
windows, for the couples to murmur before they kiss, "Think of the ships
to-night," or "Thank Heaven, I'm not the man in the lighthouse!" For all
they imagined, the ships when they vanished on the sky-line dissolved,
like snow in water. The grown-up view, indeed, was not much clearer than
the view of the little creatures in bathing drawers who were trotting
in to the foam all along the coasts of England, and scooping up buckets
full of water. They saw white sails or tufts of smoke pass across the
horizon, and if you had said that these were waterspouts, or the petals
of white sea flowers, they would have agreed.

The people in ships, however, took an equally singular view of England.
Not only did it appear to them to be an island, and a very small island,
but it was a shrinking island in which people were imprisoned. One
figured them first swarming about like aimless ants, and almost pressing
each other over the edge; and then, as the ship withdrew, one figured
them making a vain clamour, which, being unheard, either ceased, or rose
into a brawl. Finally, when the ship was out of sight of land, it became
plain that the people of England were completely mute. The disease
attacked other parts of the earth; Europe shrank, Asia shrank, Africa
and America shrank, until it seemed doubtful whether the ship would ever
run against any of those wrinkled little rocks again. But, on the other
hand, an immense dignity had descended upon her; she was an inhabitant
of the great world, which has so few inhabitants, travelling all day
across an empty universe, with veils drawn before her and behind. She
was more lonely than the caravan crossing the desert; she was infinitely
more mysterious, moving by her own power and sustained by her own