“Nor can I tell you what my thought would be,” he said after a pause. He was leaning with one arm upon the moulding of the bulwarks, and she had her eyes still fixed upon the ridges of the island. He touched her and pointed out over the water. The sun like a shield of sparkling gold had already buried half its disc beneath the horizon. They watched the remainder become gradually less and less until only a thread of gold was on the water; in another instant this had dwindled away. “I know now how I should have felt,” he said, with his eyes fixed upon the blank horizon.
The girl looked out to that blank horizon also.
Then from each fort on the cliffs there leaped a little flash of light, and the roar of the sunset guns made thunder all along the hollow shore; before the echoes had given back the sound, faint bugle-calls were borne out to the ocean as fort answered fort all along that line of mountain-wall. The girl listened until the faintest farthest thin sound dwindled away just as the last touch of sunlight had waned into blankness upon the horizon.
CHAPTER XIX.
Polonius. What treasure had he, my lord?
Hamlet. Why,
“One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.”