Читать книгу On Everything онлайн

15 страница из 62

My companion stirred and woke; he raised himself upon his arm, and, looking forward to the left and right, at last said, “Land!” I told him the name of the headland. But I did not know that there lay beyond it a long and narrow bay, nor how, at the foot of this land-locked water, a group of small white houses stood, and behind it a very venerable tower.

It was not long before the sun came up out of a sea more clear and into a sky more vivid than you will see within the soundings of the Channel. It poured upon all the hills an enlivening new light quite different from the dawn, and this was especially noticeable upon the swell and the little ridges of it, which danced and shone so that one thought of music.

Meanwhile the land grew longer before us and this one headland merged into the general line, and inland heights could be seen; a little later again it first became possible to distinguish the divisions of the fields and the separate colours of rocks and of grassland and of trees. A little while later again the white thread showed all along that coast where the water broke at the meeting of the rocks and the sea; the tide was at the flood.