Rang like a God-swept lyre;"

while Amyas, a proud smile upon his lips, stood breasting that genial
stream of airy wine with swelling nostrils and fast-heaving chest,
and seemed to drink in life from every gust. All three were silent for
awhile; and Jack and Cary, gazing downward with delight upon the glory
and the grandeur of the sight, forgot for awhile that their companion
saw it not. Yet when they started sadly, and looked into his face, did
he not see it? So wide and eager were his eyes, so bright and calm his
face, that they fancied for an instant that he was once more even as
they.

A deep sigh undeceived them. "I know it is all here--the dear old sea,
where I would live and die. And my eyes feel for it; feel for it--and
cannot find it; never, never will find it again forever! God's will be
done!"

"Do you say that?" asked Brimblecombe, eagerly.

"Why should I not? Why have I been raving in hell-fire for I know not
how many days, but to find out that, John Brimblecombe, thou better man
than I?"

"Not that last: but Amen! Amen! and the Lord has indeed had mercy upon
thee!" said Jack, through his honest tears.

"Amen!" said Amyas. "Now set me where I can rest among the rocks
without fear of falling--for life is sweet still, even without eyes,
friends--and leave me to myself awhile."

It was no easy matter to find a safe place; for from the foot of the
crag the heathery turf slopes down all but upright, on one side to a
cliff which overhangs a shoreless cove of deep dark sea, and on the
other to an abyss even more hideous, where the solid rock has sunk away,
and opened inland in the hillside a smooth-walled pit, some sixty feet
square and some hundred and fifty in depth, aptly known then as now,
as the Devil's-limekiln; the mouth of which, as old wives say, was once
closed by the Shutter-rock itself, till the fiend in malice hurled it
into the sea, to be a pest to mariners. A narrow and untrodden cavern at
the bottom connects it with the outer sea; they could even then hear the
mysterious thunder and gurgle of the surge in the subterranean adit,
as it rolled huge boulders to and fro in darkness, and forced before it
gusts of pent-up air. It was a spot to curdle weak blood, and to make
weak heads reel: but all the fitter on that account for Amyas and his
fancy.

"You can sit here as in an arm-chair," said Cary, helping him down to
one of those square natural seats so common in the granite tors.