The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little
to the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any
Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts
were strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly
moving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead
within a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wandered
up well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and
see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that
nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in
the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose
Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous,
the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty
full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were
kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships
mysterious white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridors
in some fairy-land forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals,
and runnings-to-and-fro, with leers, and agitated last embraces, and
flight of the princess, and death-bed of the king; and on the N.
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