ished except as the white outlines of the
successive breakers were lifted through the fog. The lines of surf
appeared constantly to multiply upon the beach, and yet, on counting
them, there were never any more. Sometimes, in the distance, masses
of foam rose up like a wall where the horizon ought to be; and, as the
coming waves took form out of the unseen, it seemed as if no phantom
were too vast or shapeless to come rolling in upon their dusky
shoulders.

Presently a frail gleam of something like the ghost of dead sunshine
made them look toward the west. Above the dim roofs of Castle Hill
mansion-house, the sinking sun showed luridly through two rifts of
cloud, and then the swift motion of the nearer vapor veiled both sun and
cloud, and banished them into almost equal remoteness.

Leaving the beach on their right, and passing the high rocks of the
Pirate's Cave, they presently descended to the water's edge once more.
The cliffs rose to a distorted height in the dimness; sprays of withered
grass nodded along the edge, like Ossian's spectres. Light seemed to be
vanishing from the universe, leaving them alone with the sea. And when
a solitary loon uttered his wild cry, and rising, sped away into
the distance, it was as if life were following light into an equal
annihilation. That sense of vague terror, with which the ocean sometimes
controls the fancy, began to lay its grasp on them. They remembered that
Emilia, in speaking once of her intense shrinking from death, had said
that the sea was the only thing from which she would not fear to meet
it.

Fog exaggerates both for eye and ear; it is always a sounding-board for
the billows; and in this case, as often happens, the roar did not appear
to proceed from the waves themselves, but from some source in the unseen
horizon, as if the spectators were shut within a beleaguered fortress,
and this thundering noise came from an impetuous enemy outside. Ever
and anon there was a distinct crash of heavier sound, as if some special
barricade had at length been beaten in, and the garrison must look to
their inner defences.

The tide was unusually high, and scarcely receded with the ebb, though
the surf increased; the waves came in with constant rush and wail, and
with an ominous rattle of pebbles on the little beaches, beneath the
powerful suction of the undertow; and there were more and more of those
muffled throbs along the shore which tell of coming danger as plainly as
minute