pment
of the Combe to Duncton and the weald; and I shall never see him again
till the Great Day....

THE RETURN TO ENGLAND

In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about
half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that
coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by
six o'clock that day--the ebb tide--and it was on the first of that tide
that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can
tell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods
allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now,
as I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a
thick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the
bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog,
and from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over
the iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I
was moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me
that he thought the fog would lift; and so I waited, seeking no more
sleep, but sitting up there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in
a bugle call which the French call "La Diane," and which they play to
wake the soldiers. But in summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is
waking long before.

Towards six the mist blew clean away before a little air from the
north-east; it had come sharp over those miles and miles of sand dunes
and flats which stretched away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. From
Gris-nez all the way to the Sound there is no other hill; but coarse
grass, wind-swept and flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set
sail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down the peak of the
mainsail that she might sail slowly, and crept along close to the
eastern pier, for fear that when I got to the open work the westerly
tide should drive me against the western pier; but there was no need for
all this caution, since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet was I
wise to beware, for if you give the strange gods of the sea one little
chance they will take a hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And
sailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual game of skill
against them, the heartiest and most hazardous game in the world.

So then, when I had got well outside, I found what is called "a lump."
The sea was jumbling up and down irregularly, as though great animals