

AT SEA. ^^ I^i 291 



tion from this narrow horizon in which they are pent, 

 this ring of fate surrounds and oppresses them. 

 They escape by invoking the aid of the supernatural. 

 In the sea itself there is far less to stimulate the im- 

 agination than in the varied forms and colors of the 

 land. How cold, how merciless, how elemental it 

 looks ! 



The only things that look familiar at sea are the 

 clouds. These are messengers from home, and how 

 weary and disconsolate they appear, stretching out 

 along the horizon, as if looking for a hill or moun- 

 tain-top to rest upon, nothing to hold them up, 

 a roof without walls, a span without piers. One gets 

 the impression that they are grown faint, and must 

 presently, if they reach much farther, fall into the 

 sea. But when the rain came, it seemed like mock- 

 ery, or irony on the part of the clouds. Did one 

 vaguely believe, then, that the clouds would respect 

 the sea, and withhold their needless rain ? No, they 

 treated it as if it was a mill-pond, or a spring-run, too 

 insignificant to make any exceptions to. 



One bright Sunday, when jthe surface of the sea 

 was like glass, a long chain of cloud-mountains lay to 

 the south of us all day, while the rest of the sky was 

 clear. How they glowed in the strong sunlight, their 

 summits shining like a bouquet of full moons, and 

 making a broad, white, or golden path upon the wa- 

 ter ! They came out of the southwest, an endless 

 procession of them, and tapered away in the east. 

 They were the piled, convoluted, indolent clouds of 



