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.