cairns and screes of granite, all sharp and black-edged against the
pale blue sky; and all suddenly cut off above by one long horizontal
line of dark grey cloud, which seems to hang there motionless, and yet
is growing to windward, and dying to leeward, for ever rushing out of
the invisible into sight, and into the invisible again, at railroad
speed. Out of nothing the moor rises, and into nothing it ascends,--a
great dark phantom between earth and sky, boding rain and howling
tempest, and perhaps fearful wreck--for the groundswell moans and
thunders on the beach behind us, louder and louder every moment.
Let us go on, and up the street, after we have scrambled through the
usual labyrinth of timber-baulks, rusty anchors, boats which have been
dragged, for the purpose of mending and tarring, into the very middle
of the road, and old spars stowed under walls, in the vain hope that
they may be of some use for something some day, and have stood the
stares and welcomes of the lazy giants who are sitting about upon
them, black-locked, black-bearded, with ruddy, wholesome faces, and
eyes as bright as diamonds; men who are on their own ground, and know
it; who will not touch their caps to you, or pull the short black pipe
from between their lips as you pass, but expect you to prove yourself
a gentleman, by speaking respectfully to them; which, if you do, you
will find them as hearty, intelligent, brave fellows as ever walked
this earth, capable of anything, from working the naval-brigade
guns at Sevastopol, down to running up to ... a hundred miles in a
cockleshell lugger, to forestall the early mackerel market. God be
with you, my brave lads, and with your children after you; for as long
as you are what I have known you, Old England will rule the seas, and
many a land beside!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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