Along the shores of silence

From: Bohemia in London (1907), by Arthur Ransome:

“The actor was happy. Flattered by my continual agreement, the billows of his argument rolled on and broke with increasing din along the shores of silence. The only other sound beside the long roll of his impassioned dogma was the low murmur of my assent. Give a fool a proselyte, and he will be ten times happier than a sage without one. Wilton must have enjoyed that afternoon. He thought he had a proselyte in me, and he talked like a prophet, till I wondered how it could be possible for any one man’s brain to invent such floods of nonsense. I was happy under it all, if only on account of the quiet quizzical smile of the Japanese, who was making a sketch of the orator’s face.”