E.
horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with the
world; and yonder, not far, the white coast-cliffs, not so low as at
Calais near, but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward, each
with its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw.
* * * * *
I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body
seemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and
when the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs
of Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union
Jack hang motionless.
I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea.
But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd
September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the
_Boreal's_ anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and
fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard
hawse-hole.
Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the
effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon
all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a
year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated,
with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less
terrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged and
raged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start,
and rise, at alarum so excessive, and question me with their eyes.
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