"'
We both fell into a reverie. The story and the ballad were finished,
and not a sound broke the silence except the screaming of the sea-
fowl, which led my thoughts wandering back to nights long past, when
we dragged the seine up to our chins in water through the short
midsummer night, and scrambled and rolled over on the beach in boyish
glee, after the skate and mullet, with those now gone; and as I
thought and thought, old voices seemed to call me, old faces looked
at me, of playmates, and those nearer than playmates, now sleeping in
the deep deep sea, amid far coral islands; and old figures seemed to
glide out of the mysterious dark along the still sea floor, as if the
ocean were indeed giving up her dead. I shook myself, turned away,
and tried to persuade myself that I was dreaming. Perhaps I had been
doing so. At least, I remember very little more, till I was roused
by the rattling of the chain-cable through the hawse-hole, opposite
the pier-head.
And now, gentle readers, farewell; and farewell, Clovelly, and all
the loving hearts it holds; and farewell, too, the soft still summer
weather.
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