n by
the light, when they throbbed in blood for a space, then flowed in dark
green afresh, hardening into a firm, cold, darkly green horizon.

A small screw steamer, with her funnel sloping almost over her stern,
and her greasy poles of masts resembling fibres of gold in the sunset,
was bruising her way up Channel with a frequent cock of her bow or
stern which made one wonder where the sea was that tossed her so.
There was nothing else in sight, and by the time she vanished the last
rusty tinge of red had perished in the west, and the loneliness of the
sea came like a sensible quality of cold into the darkening twilight.

"How desolate the ocean looks on a sudden!" said Grace.

I thought so too as I glanced at the ashen heads of the melting billows
and up aloft at the sky, where I took notice of an odd appearance of
vapour, a sort of dusky smearing, as it were--a clay-like kind of
cloud, as though rudely laid on by a trowel--I cannot better express
the uncommon character of the heavens that evening. Here and there a
star looked sparely and bleakly down, and in the west there was a
paring of moon, some day or two old, shining and crystalline enough to
make the dull gleam of the stars odd as an atmospheric effect.

But the breeze blew steady; there was nothing to disturb the mind in
the indications of the barometer; hour after hour the little ship was
swarming through it handsomely, and we were now drawing on much too
close to Mount's Bay (albeit this evening we were not yet abreast of
the _Start_) to pause because of a thunder-coloured, smoking sunset,
and because of a hard look of sky that might yield to the stars before
midnight and discover a wide and cloudless plain of luminaries.

"How long shall you keep on this tack?" I asked Caudel.

"All night, sir, if the wind don't head us yet. It won't put us far
off our port even at this."

"Shall you sight the _Start_ light?"

"No, sir. Our stretching away all day'll have put it out of our
_spear_ of view. The Lizard light'll be all I want, and this time
twenty-four hours I hope to be well on to it."

I went below, and Grace and I killed the time as heretofore in talking
and reading. We found the evening too short indeed, so much had we to
say to each other. Wonderful is the quality and the amount of talk
which lovers are able to get through and feel satisfied with! You hear
of silent love, of lovers staring on one another with glowing eyes,
their lips inca