int thrill ran through his
nerves at the grinding groan of the anchor, slowly hauled out of the
deep green water.

It was as if he heard the creaking of a gate which opened into an
unknown garden, a garden where life would be new and changed. Nevill
Caird had once said that there was no sharp, dividing line between
phases of existence, except one's own moods, and Stephen had thought
this true; but now it seemed as if the sea which silvered the distance
was the dividing line for him, while all that lay beyond the horizon was
mysterious as a desert mirage.

He was not conscious of any joy at starting, yet he was excited, as if
something tremendous were about to happen to him. England, that he knew
so well, seemed suddenly less real than Africa, which he knew not at
all, and his senses were keenly alert for the first time in many days.
He saw Marseilles from a new point of view, and wondered why he had
never read anything fine written in praise of the ancient Phoenician
city. Though he had not been in the East, he imagined that the old part
of the town, seen from the sea, looked Eastern, as if the traffic
between east and west, going on for thousands of years, had imported an
Eastern taste in architecture.

The huge, mosque-like cathedral bubbled with domes, where fierce gleams
of gold were hammered out by strokes of the noonday sun. A background of
wild mountain ranges, whose tortured peaks shone opaline through long
rents in mist veils, lent an air of romance to the scene, and Notre Dame
de la Garde loomed nobly on her bleached and arid height. "Have no fear:
I keep watch and ward over land and sea," seemed to say the majestic
figure of gold on the tall tower, and Stephen half wished he were of the
Catholic faith, that he might take comfort from the assurance.

As the _Charles Quex_ steamed farther and farther away, the church on
the mountainous hill appeared to change in shape. Notre Dame de la Garde
looked no longer like a building made by man, but like a great sacred
swan crowned with gold, and nested on a mountain-top. There she sat,
with shining head erect on a long neck, seated on her nest, protecting
her young, and gazing far across the sea in search of danger. The sun
touched her golden crown, and dusky cloud-shadows grouped far beneath
her eyrie, like mourners kneeling below the height to pray. The
rock-shapes and island rocks that cut the blue glitter of the sea,
suggested splendid tales of Phoenician marin