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The land rolled in placid waves to the far horizon on every hand. It was like a calm sea which is disturbed only by the lazy progress of the ocean swell. Two yurts, like the sails of hull-down ships, showed black against the sky-rim where it met the earth. The plain itself seemed at first as flat as a table, for the swells merged indistinguishably into a level whole.
At the back of the Fish and Anchor, across the road, there stretched at this time the largest and fairest bowling-green in the east of England two good acres of smooth turf, stretching almost to the edge of the sea-cliff, on which side the wall was cut down to within a foot of the ground, so that the gossips as they played, or sat and smoked on the benches about the green, might have a clear view of the ships entering or leaving the harbour, or of others that, hull-down on the horizon, took the sunset on their sails.
We had a fine breeze from the eastward, to which we showed a heavy press of canvas; the frigate accordingly made short miles of the trip along the Sardinian coast, and on the following evening arrived off the Gulf of Ajaccio in Corsica, the coast-line being about twenty miles distant, and consequently "hull-down;" the mountain-chain, however, which forms as it were the backbone of Corsica, was distinctly visible, lighted up as it was by the gorgeous tints of sunset.
They paused there but to pass: the blue-clad China-boy, the San Francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, the ogling, well-shod lady with her troop of girls; they did but flash and go; they were hull-down for us behind life's ocean, and we but hailed their topsails on the line.
When we read, 'I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living, we cannot but think of the true and perfect deliverance, when it shall be said, with a depth and a fulness of meaning with which it is never said here, 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death, and the black dread that towered so high, and closed the vista of all human expectation of the future, is now away back in the past, hull-down on the horizon as they say about ships scarcely visible, and no more to be feared.
Six of the fifteen sail counted by Captain Blyth on the previous evening were hull-down to the northward, in which direction three more vessels had put in an appearance during the hours of darkness; but these three were all in a bunch and about twelve miles to the northward and westward of the Flying Cloud.
We'll be "down, hull-down, on the old trail" from now on. God bless all we leave behind us, and send us safely back. "To-morrow we Disappear into the Unknown" I will also allude very briefly to our river journey, up a wide, slow-moving, clay-tinted stream, in a steamer which was little smaller than that which had carried us across the Atlantic.
Once only he glanced up and to the northward, where low on the horizon a faint line of smoke lingered in the wake of the Milo, already hull-down on her way; and his glance seemed to ask for assurance that he was not dreaming, that the steamship had really come and gone and left him this unaccountable guest. It was just at this moment that she answered him.
For, to start with, one of our finest and fastest merchantmen had hauled out from the main body, and under a heavy press of canvas was already hull-down in the south-eastern board, being evidently in possession of a prize-crew, while, in the thickest of the ruck, was a very large brigantine, under exceedingly short canvas, yet keeping pace with the slow-sailing merchantmen, first sheering alongside one and hugging her affectionately for a few minutes, and then turning her attention to another and doing likewise.
They are hull-down; but there are two columns of smoke approaching at a great speed from the south-east. They are about twelve miles away and, so far as I can make out, are just abreast of Point Angamos." Jim did not wait to hear the reply of "Very good.
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