XV

_'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day._

--JOHN WEBSTER.

On the stroke of two next morning the doctor conducted me down to the creek in the river-bank where he kept his boat. There was little light but of the stars in the sky; nothing stirring. She floated dim and monstrous on the softly-running water, a navy in germ, and could have sat without danger thirty men like me. We stood on the bank, side by side, eyeing her vacancy. And (I can answer for myself) night-thoughts rose up in us at sight of her. Was it indeed only wind in the reeds that sighed around us? only the restless water insistently whispering and calling? only of darkness were these forbidding shadows?

I looked up sharply at the doctor from such pensive embroidery, and found him as far away as I. He nodded and smiled, and we shook hands on the bank in the thick mist.

"There's biscuits and a little meat, wine, and fruit," he said in an undertone. "G.o.d be with you, sir! I sadly mistrust the future. ...

'Tis ever my way, at parting."

We said good-bye again, to the dream-cry of some little fluttering creature of the rushes. And well before dawn I was floating midstream, my friend a memory, Rosinante in clover, and my travels, so far as this brief narrative will tell, nearly ended.

I saw nothing but a few long-haired, grazing cattle on my voyage, that eyed me but cursorily. I pa.s.sed unmolested among the waterfowl, between the never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetened with storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. When too the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank and await the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I began to approach the sea.

I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with how broad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match, nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirs beneath all music--the deep's loud-falling billow.

I pushed ash.o.r.e, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ash tree at the waterside. And after scrambling some little distance over dunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like a Greek before the sea.

Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam. Far to either side of me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almost violet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.

I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart. Its light, salt airs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of a region I could remember only as one who, remembering that he has dreamed, remembers nothing more. Larks rose, singing, behind me. In a calm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace. Here indeed was solitude!

It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that I thought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of the horns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city. If I gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine above the azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again.

So, caring not how far I must go so long as my path lay beside these breaking waters, I set out on the firm, white sands to prove this city the mirage I deemed it.

What wonder, then, my senses fell asleep in that vast lullaby! And out of a daydream almost as deep as that in which I first set out, I was suddenly aroused by a light tapping sound, distinct and regular between the roaring breakers.

I lifted my eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed.

But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade among the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I had heard.

So engrossed was she with her building in the sand that she had not heard me approaching. She laboured on at the margin of the cliff's shadow where the sea-birds cried, answering Echo in the rocks. So solitary and yet so intent, so sedate and yet so eager a little figure she seemed in the long motionlessness of the sh.o.r.e, by the dark heedlessness of the sea, I hesitated to disturb her.

Who of all Time's children could this be playing uncompanioned by the sea? And at a little distance betwixt me and her in the softly-mounded sand her spade had already scrawled in large, ungainly capitals, the answer--"Annabel Lee." The little flounced black frock, the tresses of black hair, the small, beautiful dark face--this then was Annabel Lee; and that bright, phantom city I had seen--that was the vanishing mockery of her kingdom.

I called her from where I stood--"Annabel Lee!" She lifted her head and shook back her hair, and gazed at me startled and intent. I went nearer.

"You are a very lonely little girl," I said.

"I am building in the sand," she answered.

"A castle?"

She shook her head.

"It was in dreams," she said, flushing darkly.

"What kind of dream was it in then?"

"Oh! I often dream it; and I build it in the sand. But there's never time: the sea comes back."

"Was the tide quite high when you began?" I asked; for now it was low.

"Just that much from the stones," she said; "I waited for it ever so long."

"It has a long way to come yet," I said; "you will finish it _this_ time, I dare say."

She shook her head and lifted her spade.

"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed, or the sh.e.l.ls, and it comes back very, very quickly."

"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"

She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.

"He would help you."

"He didn't in my dream," she said doubtfully. She raised long, stealthy eyes to mine, and spoke softly and deliberately. "Besides, there isn't any little boy."

"None, Annabel Lee?" I said.

"Why," she answered, "I have played here years and years and years, and there are only the gulls and terns and cormorants, and that!" She pointed with her spade towards the broken water.

"You know all their names then?" I said.

"Some I know," she answered with a little frown, and looked far out to sea. Then, turning her eyes, she gazed long at me, searchingly, forlornly on a stranger. "I am going home now," she said.

I looked at the house of sand and smiled. But she shook her head once more.

"It never _could_ be finished," she said firmly, "though I tried and tried, unless the sea would keep quite still just once all day, without going to and fro. And then," she added with a flash of anger--"then I would not build."

"Well," said I, "when it is nearly finished, and the water washes up, and up, and washes it away, here is a flower that came from Fairyland. And that, dear heart, is none so far away."

She took the purple flower I had plucked in Ennui's garden in her slim, cold hand.

"It's amaranth," she said; and I have never seen so old a little look in a child's eyes.

"And all the flowers' names too?" I said.

She frowned again. "It's amaranth," she said, and ran off lightly and so deftly among the rocks and in the shadow that was advancing now even upon the foam of the sea, that she had vanished before I had time to deter, or to pursue her. I sought her awhile, until the dark rack of sunset obscured the light, and the sea's voice changed; then I desisted.

It was useless to remain longer beneath the looming caves, among the stones of so inhospitable a sh.o.r.e. I was a stranger to the tides. And it was clear high-water would submerge the narrow sands whereon I stood.