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Nevertheless, when, at the end of the level plain, the road turned off into the wooded region, the unusual aspect of the forest aroused his curiosity. The tufted woods and lofty trees, in endless succession under the fading light, impressed him by their profound solitude and their religious silence.
Around in the near distance rise other less elevated rocks and cliffs, some of them tufted with oaks and beeches, others naked and time-stained, and all together forming a scene of such stern wildness as was well fitted for a hiding-place of liberty, or for its immolation.
Before long a bright gleam shot through the tufted outline of a dark wooded hill, and shortly after, just when a gray and misty shadow had settled down upon the half-seen landscape, the broad full moon came soaring up above the tree-tops, pouring her soft and silver radiance over the lovely valley, and investing its rare beauties with something of romance a sentiment which belongs not to the gay, gaudy sunshine.
She passed the Harvest Moon, then swung around and came up, on the other side. The Harvest Moon made no effort to escape her anchorage, though the engine below began thumping busily. Sadler went aft, dragging the long black hose, and sat on the rail till the Juanita drew in to forty feet away, and through the deckhouse windows you could see the tufted caps of the suppressed soldiery.
Follow us, then, reader, in imagination, out of the gay watering- place, with its London shops and London equipages, along the broad road beneath the sunny limestone cliff, tufted with golden furze; past the huge oaks and green slopes of Tor Abbey; and past the fantastic rocks of Livermead, scooped by the waves into a labyrinth of double and triple caves, like Hindoo temples, upborne on pillars banded with yellow and white and red, a week's study, in form and colour and chiaro-oscuro, for any artist; and a mile or so further along a pleasant road, with land-locked glimpses of the bay, to the broad sheet of sand which lies between the village of Paignton and the sea sands trodden a hundred times by Montagu and Turton, perhaps, by Dillwyn and Gaertner, and many another pioneer of science.
These generally sit high up in the tall and tufted trees, but still are not out of the Indian’s reach; for his blowpipe, at its greatest elevation, will send an arrow three hundred feet. Silent as midnight he steals under them, and so cautiously does he tread the ground that the fallen leaves rustle not beneath his feet.
In mournful mood, he threw himself at the foot of one of the hills, upon one of the tufted roots of the huge tree which sheltered the little hollow, and resigned himself to a somewhat bitter survey of his own condition, and of the privations and probable straits into which his rash thoughtlessness had so unhappily involved him.
It was alone, and at a far higher figure than my finances warranted, that I discussed my dinner; alone that I took my ticket at St. Lazare; all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I watched the moon shine on the Seine flood with its tufted isles, on Rouen with her spires, and on the shipping in the harbour of Dieppe.
As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky.
It was comfortable, however, and had conveniences a folding card-table, a cribbage-board, score-pads for whist and five hundred; a humidor of cigars; a large Morris chair and an ugly but well-padded couch of green tufted velvetine. They sat about in chairs, talking. Ray came in, slapped Carl on the back, roared: "Well, here's the stranger! Holy Mike! have you got a mustache, too?
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