Sometimes, with the paint stirred up and creaming,
and the ooze of the brush trimmed warily, through the rushes and ragwort
and sea-willow his keen, unconquerable eyes would spy the only figure
that quelled them, faraway, shown against the shining water, or shadowed
upon the flat mirror of the sand. But, alas! there was always another
figure near it, bigger, bulkier, framed with ugly angles, jerking about
with the elbow sticking out, instead of gliding gracefully. Likely
enough the lovely form, brought nearer to the eyes and heart by love,
would flit about beautifully for two sweet moments, filling with rapture
all the flashes of the sea and calm of the evening sky beyond; and then
the third moment would be hideous. For the figure of the ungainly foe
would stride across the delicious vision, huge against the waves like
Cyclops, and like him gesticulant, but unhappily not so single-eyed that
the slippery fair might despise him. Then away would fly all sense of
art and joy in the touch of perfection, and a very nasty feeling would
ensue, as if nothing were worth living for, and nobody could be believed
in.
That plaguesome Polypheme was Captain Stubbard, begirt with a wife,
and endowed with a family almost in excess of benediction, and dancing
attendance upon Miss Dolly, too stoutly for his own comfort, in the hope
of procuring for his own Penates something to eat and to sit upon. Some
evil genius had whispered, or rather trumpeted, into his ear--for he
had but one left, and that worked very seldom, through alarm about the
bullet which had carried off its fellow--that if he desired, as he did
with heart and stomach, to get a clear widening by 200 pounds of his
strait ways and restricted means, through Admiral Darling it might
be done, and Miss Dolly was the proper one to make him do it.
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