Occasional rags lay at the water’s edge beneath the sea wall like disembowelled toys over and beyond which the wings of sea-gulls flashed in the sun, settling in the water and on a ruffled day like this, with a gentle wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, seeming to roll or sail tenderly upon the purest green and blue reflected marbles. He set out along Starbank Road upon the pavement that ran close to the wall. There were houses close to the footpath on the other side of the street and on a wild blowing day when the tide was full the spray would fly toward them from the sea. He came to Granton Road and was steeped once again in the senses of the neighbourhood, antennae toward past times: past moorings and harbours and custom houses: the spectral feeling which both modern and ancient Edinburgh aroused in him as no other city did. Was it a reticent self-deceiving, self-revealing film of time blowing still, not yet settled into oblivion? The lines ran in his head: They do not always deal in blood Nor yet in breaking human bones, For Quixot-like they knock down stones.
