The crash of the waves on the shingle grew faint behind.
The lugger began to prattle, as she took the water bobbingly. Overhead the sky was blue, with wisps of snow. Kit hugged the tiller, shivering in spasms.
On his right Beachy Head, rusty of hide, waded white-footed into the deep. Before him opened the sea, a plain of palest blue, blurred with wind and patched here and there with silver. Eastward a road of twinkling light ran across the water. Pevensey Levels lay behind him, brown beyond the shingle. At back of them a range of dim hills rose and launched into the sea; and Northward a vague gloom in the sky told of man's great camping-place by the Thames.
The great sea lolled about the boy, breathing in sleep.
How soothing was the slow large life of the waters after the hubbub and horror of those last few minutes, already so remote!
Above him a kittiwake dreamed. The boy let himself drift, his mind rocking to the rock of the sea.
The waters swung by, singing to themselves. They poured peace upon his troubled spirit. Their strong life entered into his, a resistless tide. Feebly he tried to stay it. He wanted to go back to his distress, to dwell upon it, to worry it, as a young dog frets to go back to the kill.
Nature, the Comforter, would have none of it. She loved her ailing little one over well to let him have his way. She had him in her arms, and would not let him go. She sang in his ear; she rocked his spirit to sleep. The floodgates were open; and that tide of healing stole in upon his being. In his mind it made religious music. He could not resist it. Half reluctant he let himself drift on those sweet waters.
The sea roamed blindly by. He watched her as a sick child watches his mother. Sense was alive; self was dead. His body was the eye of his soul, the avenue of spirit. It had no life of its own to cloud his clear vision.
The tide of healing swept forward, smoothing the rough surfaces, washing away the jagged edges of pain. As it flowed on, that squabble on the beach a few minutes back receded, ultimately to be lost to view. It had been drowned by the incoming waters.