“Jim glided through the nugatory holiday throng and dived again from the high board. He floated on his back and gazed at the vast heavenly dome above, infinity. Over there the Muglins, and close by, watching from his ledge, MacEmm, reposing, admiring him.”

“And down they’d descend the winders into the gentlemen’s bathing place, still raw and long-shadowed.”

“Behind loomed the battery walls and beyond stretched the craggy rocks. It seemed a glorious place in the morning, an extraordinary grace to be allowed there, where man and nature mixed and lost each other, one in the other like the land in the sea.”

“It seemed to hang in the air, the foam, and shine of its own luminescence. The wind was boastful in his ear.”

“And still he roared while Doyler roared, up to the Point where the wind hit them with a coarse cloth cuff; then round the battery wall, down the sloping winders, on through the shadows and shelters, down into the Forty Foot where their howls exhausted on the hanging rocks. They collapsed at the steps that dropped to the water where wavelets lapped, foamlessly lapping.”

“Little more than a rock to hold the light that told the rock’s existence.”

“Hard above loomed the Martello Tower, looking ghostly and portentous on its grassy knoll.”

“The city lay under a haze, but Howth was sunny and clear, a sleeveless, sinewy arm thrown out while Dublin dozed.”

“The tide was half-way down and he listened to the lazy rush of its waves. Straggling rocks creamed in the sun, melting to tan, to umber in the sea. Dark weeds chained them.”

“They skirted the ladies’ bathing place, that seemed a deep and untouched pool, and climbed instead the brawny ridges that thrust to the sea.”

“I should visit down the back of the pier and find me out a sergeant-major. Pretend temples there that give out on the sea. Might have been built for the purpose.”

“The road must squeeze between chapel and college and he glances up at the gaunt red brick of Presentation where no light shows ...”

“... No light shows from the church and on he treads without signing the cross.”