"The Earl of Gloucester
should be with us now:--
How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles; half-way down
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.
"This is splendid," said the captain. "We'll be across in half an hour.
We'll catch the train for Paris, and you shall dance at the Closerie
to-night."
Josiah didn't dance, and didn't know what the Closerie might be.
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