The water was warmer than the air. When it clasped his waist, he trusted himself to it faithfully.
The sea was his mother, and the mother of his race. Her arms were about him; her spirit entered into his. How pure she was, how strong, how good! He kissed her cool brow and dropped his head upon her bosom. Turning on his back, he saw the wall of the Downs, black beneath glorious stars. On the top of the wall poised the moon, peeping over the brim of the world at him. He waved to her, laughing: she too was a friend. And the moon, wise as innocent, smiled back.
He swam leisurely, without splash, almost without ripple, quiet as the tide.
He had the world to himself, and loved the loneliness.
Out here, the sea about him, the night above, he could feel the slow tides of God pushing onwards through the dark of Time.
Wars and tumults and all the tiny irritations and griefs of life, what were they to that immense-moving flood? And he was one with that flood. Stealing through the water with cleaving arms, he was assured of it.
V
Something rose shadowy and gaunt before him. It was the privateer.
The sight tumbled him out of Eternity into Time. His heart began to clamour, as though it would force its way out of his body.
No longer one with God, seeing all things with His large eyes, and loving them—he was a little boy, mortally afraid, alone in the vast and callous night.