Till at the set of sun all tracks and ways

In darkness lay enshrouded. And e'en thus

The utmost limit of the great profound

At length we reach'd, where in dark gloom and mist

Cimmeria's people and their city lie

Enveloped ever.--ODYSSEY (MUSGROVE)

The October afternoon had set in before the brothers were the way

to Nissard; and in spite of Berenger's excited mood, the walk

through the soft, sinking sand could not be speedily performed. It

was that peculiar sand-drift which is the curse of so many coasts,

slowly, silently, irresistibly flowing, blowing, creeping in, and

gradually choking all vegetation and habitation. Soft and almost

impalpable, it lay heaped in banks yielding as air, and yet far

more than deep enough to swallow up man and horse. Nay, tops of

trees, summits of chimneys, told what it had already swallowed.

The whole scene far and wide presented nothing but the lone, tame

undulations, liable to be changed by every wind, and solitary

beyond expression--a few rabbits scudding hither and thither, or a

sea-gull floating with white, ghostly wings in the air, being the

only living things visible. On the one hand a dim, purple horizon

showed that the inhabited country lay miles inland; on the other

lay the pale, gray, misty expanse of sea, on which Philip's eyes

could lovingly discern the THROSTLE'S masts.

That view was Philip's chief comfort. The boy was feeling more

eerie and uncomfortable than ever he had been before as he plodded

along, sinking deep with every step almost up to his ankles in the

sand, on which the bare-footed guide ran lightly, and Berenger,

though sinking no less deeply, seemed insensible to all

inconveniences. This desolateness was well-nigh unbearable; no one

dared to speak while Berenger thus moved on in the

unapproachableness of his great grief, and Philip presently began

to feel a dreamy sense that they had all thus been moving for

years, that this was the world's end, the land of shadows, and that

his brother was a ghost already.

Besides vague alarms like these,

there was the dismal English and Protestant prejudice in full force

in Philip's mind, which regarded the resent ground as necessarily

hostile, and all Frenchmen, above all French priests, as in league

to cut off every Englishman and Protestant. He believed himself in

a country full of murderers, and was walking on with the one

determination that his brother should not rush on danger without

him, and that the Popish rogues should be kept in mind that there

was an English ship in sight. Alas! that consolation was soon

lost, for a dense gray mist was slowly creeping in from the sea,

and blotted out the vessel, then gathered in closer, and

obliterated all landmarks. Gradually it turned to a heavy rain,

and about the same time the ground on which they walked became no

longer loose sand-hills, but smooth and level. It was harder

likewise from the wet, and this afforded better walking, but there

lay upon it fragments of weed and shell, as though it were liable

to be covered by the sea, and there was a low, languid plash of the

tide, which could not be seen.




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