Excitement is a crop that, to be large, must grow--though
it thrives all the better without much root--and in this particular
field it began to grow before noon of Saturday. For the men who were
too old to go to sea, and the boys who were too young, and the women
who were never of the proper age, all these kept looking from the best
lookouts, but nothing could they see to enable them to say when the
kettle, or the frying-pan, or gridiron, would be wanted. They rubbed
their eyes grievously, and spun round three times, if time had brought
or left them the power so to spin; and they pulled an Irish
halfpenny, with the harp on, from their pockets, and moistened it with
saliva--which in English means spat on it--and then threw it into the
pocket on the other side of body. But none of these accredited appeals
to heaven put a speck upon the sea where the boats ought to have been,
or cast upon the clouds a shade of any sail approaching. Uneasily
wondering, the grannies, wives, and little ones went home, when the
nightfall quenched all eyesight, and told one another ancient tales of
woe.
Yet there is a salve for every sore, a bung for every bunghole. Upon the
Sunday morning, when the tide was coming in, and a golden haze hung
upon the peaceful sea, and the seven bells of the old grey church were
speaking of the service cheerfully, suddenly a deep boom moved the bosom
of distance, and palpitated all along the shore.
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