'
Our talk ended: but the rain did not: and we were at last fain to
leave our shelter, and let ourselves be blown by the gale (the
difficulty being not to progress forward, but to keep our feet) back
to the shed where our ponies were tied, and to canter home to
Lynmouth, with the rain cutting our faces like showers of pebbles,
and our little mountain ponies staggering against the wind, and more
than once, if Londoners will believe me, blown sheer up against the
bank by some mad gust, which rushed perpendicularly, not down, but
up, the chasms of the glens below.
II.--THE COAST LINE.
It is four o'clock on a May morning, and Claude and I are just
embarking on board a Clovelly trawling skiff, which, having disposed
of her fish at various ports along the Channel, is about to run
leisurely homewards with an ebb tide, and a soft north-easterly
breeze.
So farewell, fair Lynmouth; and ye storm-spirits, send us a
propitious day; and dismiss those fantastic clouds which are
coquetting with your thrones, crawling down one hill-side, and
whirling and leaping up another, in wreaths of snow, and dun, and
amber, pierced every minute by some long glittering upward arrow from
the rising sun, which gilds grey crags and downs a thousand feet
above, while underneath the gorges still sleep black and cold in
shade.
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