A Strange Ship
The horizon is lost in a grey mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is thunder over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem 'men like trees walking'. The fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers.
I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spy-glass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange ship.