Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight."
"I'll look no more," said Josiah, who also knew his Shakespeare.
"Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong."
It was passing strange and at first dreadful, this intense silence and this strangeness of the familiar earth. But after a while everything like terror passed away from Josiah's mind. He began to feel the fascination of the thing. His spirits rose as he breathed the delicious air, and when the captain said, "We are over the water now," and Josiah looking down discerned the sea gleaming below, he could have clapped his hands for joy.