nd
creaks under rapid motion, like a mast; and the angry vans,
disappointed of progress, are ready to grind to powder all that comes
within their grasp, as they revolve hopelessly in this sea of air.

When the sun grows hot, I like to take refuge in a sheltered nook
beside Goat Island Lighthouse, where the wharf shades me, and the
resonant plash of waters multiplies itself among the dark piles,
increasing the delicious sense of coolness. While the noonday bells
ring twelve, I take my rest. Round the corner of the pier the
fishing-boats come gliding in, generally with a boy asleep forward, and
a weary man at the helm; one can almost fancy that the boat itself
looks weary, having been out since the early summer sunrise. In
contrast to this expression of labor ended, the white pleasure-boats
seem but to be taking a careless stroll by water; while a skiff full of
girls drifts idly along the shore, amid laughter and screaming and much
aimless splash. More resolute and business-like, the boys row their
boat far up the bay; then I see a sudden gleam of white bodies, and
then the boat is empty, and the surrounding water is sprinkled with
black and bobbing heads. The steamboats look busier yet, as they go
puffing by at short intervals, and send long waves up to my retreat;
and then some schooner sails in, full of life, with a white ripple
round her bows, till she suddenly rounds to drops anchor, and is still.
Opposite me, on the landward side of the bay, the green banks slope to
the water; on yonder cool piazza there is a young mother who swings her
baby in the hammock, or a white-robed figure pacing beneath the
trailing vines. Peace and lotus-eating on shore; on the water, even in
the stillest noon, there are life and sparkle and continual change.

One of those fishermen whose boats have just glided to their moorings
is to me a far more interesting person than any of his mates, though he
is perhaps the only one among them with whom I have never yet exchanged
a word. There is good reason for it; he has been deaf and dumb since
boyhood. He is reported to be the boldest sailor among all these daring
men; he is the last to retreat before the coming storm; the first after
the storm to venture through the white and whirling channels, between
dangerous ledges, to which others give a wider berth. I do not wonder
at this, for think how much of the awe and terror of the tempest must
vanish if the ears be closed! The ominous undertone of