It was something so vast and full of motion that I was seized with a deadly vertigo--it was the sea of my imagining! Without a moment's hesitation, without asking how this knowledge had been wrought, without astonishment even, I recognized it and I trembled with a great emotion.

It was so dark a green as to be almost black; to me it seemed unstable, perfidious, all ingulfing, always turbulent, and of a sinister, menacing aspect.

Above it, in harmony with it, stretched the gray and lowering sky.
And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow light showed through this cleft.
Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus quickly?
Perhaps I had, but without being conscious of it, for when I was about five or six months old I had been brought to the Island by my great aunt, my grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it had played so great a part in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was born with a nascent conception of it and its immensity.
We communed together a moment, one with the other--I was deeply fascinated.

At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,--and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile.

With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home.