Bronze never moved, and his eyes never turned from the little boat that went and left him there—the little boat that fast became merely a flash and speck of white against the azure air, no bigger than the breadth of a seagull's wings.
An hour drifted by. The church-clock on the cliffs had struck four times; a deep-toned, weary bell, that tolled for every quarter, and must often have been heard, at dead of night, by dying men, drowning unshriven and unhouselled.
Suddenly the sand about us, so fawn-hued, smooth, and beautifully ribbed, grew moist, and glistened with a gleam of water, like eyes that fill with tears.
Bronze never saw: he only watched the boat. A little later the water gushed above the sand, and, gathering in a frail rippling edge of foam, rolled up and broke upon the rock.
And still he never saw; for still he watched the boat.
Awhile, and the water grew in volume, and filled the mouse's pool till it brimmed over, and bathed the dull grasses till they glowed like flowers; and drew the sea-crabs and the tiny dwellers of the shells back once more into its wondrous living light.
And all around the fresh tide rose, silently thus about the rocks and stones; gliding and glancing in all the channels of the shore, until the sands were covered, and the grasses gathered in, and all the creeping, hueless things were lost within its space; and in the stead of them, and of the bronzed palm-leaves of weed, and of the great brown boulders gleaming in the sun, there was but one vast lagoon of shadowless bright water everywhere.
And still he never saw; for still he watched the boat.
By this time the tide, rolling swiftly in before a strong sou'-wester, had risen midway against the rock on which we had been left, and was breaking froth and foam upon the rock's worn side. For this rock alone withstood the passage of the sea: there was naught else but this to break the even width of water. All other things save this had been subdued and reapen.
It was all deep water around; and the water glowed a strange emerald green, like the green in a lizard or snake. The shore, that had looked so near, now seemed so far, far off; and the woods were hidden in mist, and the cottages were all blurred with the brown of the cliff, and there came no sound of any sort from the land—no distant bell, no farm-bird's call, no echo of children's voices. There was only one sound at all; and that was the low, soft, ceaseless murmuring of the tide as it glided inward.