At the head of this
descent the Atlantic had come into sight, and all the way down its
echoes had grown in the boy's ears, confusing themselves with a
delicious odour which came in fact from the fields of sedge, though he
attributed it to the ocean.

But the sound had amounted to a loud humming at most; and it was with a
leap and a shout, as they rounded the last foothill and saw the vast
empty beach running northward before them, league upon league, that the
thunder of the surf broke on them. For a while the boom and crash of it
fairly stunned the child. He caught at an arm-strap hanging by the
window and held on with all his small might, while the world he knew
with its familiar protective boundaries fell away, melted, left him--a
speck of life ringed about with intolerable roaring emptiness.
To a companion, had there been one in the coach, he must have clung in
sheer terror; yes, even to his father, to whom he had never clung and
could scarcely imagine himself clinging. But his father rode ahead,
carelessly erect on his blood-horse--horse and rider seen in a blur
through the salt-encrusted glass. Therefore Master Dicky held on as
best he might to the arm-strap.

By degrees his terror drained away, though its ebb left him shivering.
Child though he was, he could not remember when he had not been curious
about the sea. In a dazed fashion he stared out upon the breakers.
The wind had died down after the tempest, but the Atlantic kept its
agitation. Meeting the shore (which hereabouts ran shallow for five or
six hundred yards) it reared itself in ten-foot combers, rank stampeding
on rank, until the sixth or seventh hurled itself far up the beach,
spent itself in a long receding curve, and drained back to the foaming
forces behind. Their untiring onset fascinated Dicky; and now and
again he tasted renewal of his terror, as a wave, taller than the rest
or better timed, would come sweeping up to the coach itself, spreading
and rippling about the wheels and the horses' fetlocks. "Surely this
one would engulf them," thought the child, recalling Pharaoh and his
chariots; but always the furious charge spent itself in an edge of white
froth that faded to delicate salt filigree and so vanished. When this
had happened a dozen times or more, and still without disaster, he took
heart and began to turn it all into a game, choosing this or that
breaker and making imaginary wagers upon it; but yet the spectacle
fascinated hi