But by-and-by I went to a place where the shore was quite different. There were no rocky cliffs, like giants, guarding the land; only a long reach of soft white sand, with which I was never tired of playing—making forts with moats round them to keep off the enemy; or gardens with straight paths, and trim beds in which I planted sea-daisies and poppies.
It seemed as if there was nothing about this shore strong enough to keep back the great waves. They rolled in upon the sand with an angry roar when the wind was high, and swept away my castles and gardens in no time. Still, even here there was a bound, for the sea did not overflow the land; and so I learnt that those waves, which threaten to overwhelm everything in their resistless march, are kept in their place by God, who alone can say to the restless ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
As the poet George Herbert has beautifully said,
"Tempests are calm to Thee; they know Thy hand,
And hold it fast as children do their father's,
Which cry and follow, Thou hast made poor sand
Bound the proud sea, even when it swells and gathers."
I do not mean that the waves, as they rush like an invading army upon the land, have no effect upon it. Look at the Map of England, and see how the outline of the coast on the east and south has been jagged and broken. Or go and see the Needles in the Isle of Wight, and you will learn how the constant dash of the ocean can hollow out not only caves, but deep coves and spreading bays, especially when the land against which it breaks is made of chalk, or some of the softer rocks. Thus in the course of long centuries, the seashore may rise or sink; peninsulas may become islands by the narrow neck which united them to the mainland sinking into the water—but whatever the land loses in one place, it gains in another, by the quantity of sand and mud cast up by the waves. Many changes are caused by the restless sea, but yet, even in its wildest moods, it owns the curbing hand of its Maker; it may ebb and flow, but still keeps in its appointed place.
This ebbing and flowing, which is caused by the coming in and going out of the tides, was a great puzzle to me long ago. I used often to hear the fishermen say at what hour it would be "full tide"; but I saw no mark which could help them to fix the time, and wondered, when I found their words came true, how they could know so surely. When I was older I learnt, what is very interesting, that the gradual rising of the ocean, which is called the "flow," and the gradual going back again of the water, which is called the "ebb," do not happen at any chance time, for nothing is by chance in God's creation, but at regular intervals, and in obedience to one of those wonderful rules made by God, which people call the "laws of nature"—rules which never change as the rules which men make so often do. And so we notice that for about six hours from the time when the tide begins to rise, the sea gains upon the land, either stealing on, step by step, over the pebbly beach, and creeping tip the mouths of the rivers, or, when the winds are abroad, rushing over the sand, and dashing against the rocks, as if it would sweep all before it. No power upon earth can stop that steady onward march of wave upon wave, until the unseen boundary is reached. Then we say, "It is full tide." The mighty ocean seems to pause for a few minutes, then some old fisherman, who has known that shore all his life, says, "The tide has turned"; and for six hours the gradual fall goes on. At last the lowest point of the "ebb" is reached—a few minutes' rest, and then the "flow" begins again.
To those who have seen it all their lives there is nothing strange about this, but when some brave Roman soldiers, who were accustomed to conquer wherever they came, saw for the first time this ebb and flow of the tide, they were more frightened than they would have been if they had seen an army of savage men with spears and clubs rushing upon them with their fierce war-cry. They were in the presence of a power which they could not understand, and in terror they besought their general to lead them against foes whom they could face, or to take them back to their own land!
By-and-by you will be interested in learning more about the tides, but I will only tell you now that they are caused by the sun and moon. Two pair of waves travel round the earth every day, the greater pair obedient to the moon, which, because she is so much nearer to us, has a greater power of drawing the water to herself than the sun has; the lesser pair obedient, in like manner, to the attraction of the sun. This is all that I can tell you now about a very difficult subject, and it is more than I told Chrissie or Ernest when we were talking about the sea; but then you know we had not much time for matters hard to be explained. One thing which I think we did talk about was the depth of the sea, and I know there were some differences of opinion about this as well as about its colour.
First of all, then, How deep is the "deep, deep sea"?
Actually, in some places, five miles deep, about the height of the loftiest of mountain-peaks. I have heard that these far-away ocean-depths are very quiet and still—no rolling waves ever break their stillness, and this is proved in a very beautiful way. At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where overhead great billows which seem mountain-high are in ceaseless motion, there lie beds of delicate shells, so small that you need a microscope to see their beauty, yet these shells are unbroken; no storm ever reaches their quiet home; they are among the lovely things which the ocean hides in its "treasure-caves," and they only come to light when the long line with a clip at the end, which is used for deep-sea soundings, brings them to the surface from those