in
dry summer weather to climb the steep turf to the furze line above.

Dry grass is as slippery as if it were hair, and the sheep have fed it
too close for a grip of the hand. Under the furze (still far from the
summit) they have worn a path--a narrow ledge, cut by their cloven
feet--through the sward. It is time to rest; and already, looking back,
the sea has extended to an indefinite horizon. This climb of a few
hundred feet opens a view of so many miles more. But the ships lose
their individuality and human character; they are so far, so very far,
away, they do not take hold of the sympathies; they seem like
sketches--cunningly executed, but only sketches--on the immense canvas
of the ocean. There is something unreal about them.

On a calm day, when the surface is smooth as if the brimming ocean had
been straked--the rod passed across the top of the measure, thrusting
off the irregularities of wave; when the distant green from long
simmering under the sun becomes pale; when the sky, without cloud, but
with some slight haze in it, likewise loses its hue, and the two so
commingle in the pallor of heat that they cannot be separated--then the
still ships appear suspended in space. They are as much held from above
as upborne from beneath.

They are motionless, midway in space--whether it is sea or air is not to
be known. They neither float nor fly; they are suspended. There is no
force in the flat sail, the mast is lifeless, the hull without impetus.
For hours they linger, changeless as the constellations, still, silent,
motionless, phantom vessels on a void sea.

Another climb up from the sheep path, and it is not far then to the
terrible edge of that tremendous cliff which rises straighter than a
ship's side out of the sea, six hundred feet above the detached rock
below, where the limpets cling like rivet heads, and the sand rills run
around it. But it is not possible to look down to it--the glance of
necessity falls outwards, as a raindrop from the eaves is deflected by
the wind, because it _is_ the edge where the mould crumbles; the
rootlets of the grass are exposed; the chalk is about to break away in
flakes.

You cannot lean over as over a parapet, lest such a flake should detach
itself--lest a mere trifle should begin to fall, awakening a dread and
dormant inclination to slide and finally plunge like it. Stand back; the
sea there goes out and out, to the left and to the right, and how far is
it to the blue o