CHAPTER it 
ON THE GREAT NESS-SIDE 
ee I was to see the cormorants fly out from 
their caves, but my hopes were too high, and so 
proper for dashing. Having gone to bed at six, I 
awoke at ten, dozed till eleven, read Shakespeare till 
near twelve, and, soon after, got up. It was night 
when I first opened the door and looked out, morning 
when I went away. The moon had possessed the 
world in fullest sovereignty, had streamed her silver 
over land and sea. Now she was deposed, dethroned, 
yet there had only intervened the short time necessary 
to resuscitate the peat fire and make a cup of tea. 
Yet it is not morning either, even yet—or only on the 
eastern sea and in the eastern sky ; the one a lake of 
lucid light, hung in an all but universal pall of dun 
cloud, the other lying beneath it, bathed in it, glowing 
with reflected colours, which yet seem deeper and 
more lurid than those from which they have their 
birth. Two seas of surpassing splendour : and long 
lines of heavy purple cloud hang, like ocean islands, 
in the one of the sky. The other, the true sea, has 
a strangely opaque appearance—it does not look like 
water at all. It is this that makes the morning; all else 
is dark and shrouded. Standing here, upon a corner- 
stone of this island, one looks from night into day. 
Just before the sun rises the clouds about become 
G SI 
