On our right, from our very feet, the
sea spread out to the horizon; a single falcon was wheeling about the
ledges below; a single cormorant was fishing in the breakers, diving
and rising again like some tiny water-beetle;
'The murmuring surge
That on the unnumbered pebbles idly chafed
Could not be heard so high.'
The only sound beside the rustle of the fern before the startled deer
was the soft mysterious treble of the wind as it swept over the face
of the cliff beneath us; but the cool air was confined to the hill-
tops round beneath, from within a short distance of the shore, the
sea was shrouded in soft summer haze. The far Atlantic lay like an
ocean of white wool, out of which the Hartland Cliffs and the highest
point of Lundy just showed their black peaks. Here and there the
western sun caught one white bank of mist after another, and tinged
them with glowing gold; while nearer us long silvery zigzag tide-
lines, which we could have fancied the tracks of water-fairies,
wandered away under the smoky grey-brown shadows of the fog, and
seemed to vanish hundreds of miles off into the void of space, so
completely was all notion of size or distance destroyed by the soft
gradations of the mist.
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