The Observations of Professor Maturin

by Clyde Furst

“Behold me returned from a summer beside the sea,” he said in greeting. “I see that you note the visible indications of my sea-change. Whenever you are in the mood for a tide of talk, I believe I can convince you that my experience was as rich as its outward signs are strange.” I reminded him that there was never any time like the present, and added such further solicitation that he began at once.

“You know the locality of my preference: a place frequented just enough not to be lonely, a region of bays and sounds as well as of open sea; where the waves batter at the cliffs only to return their spoil to the sands—where, in short, the unity of the element appears in endless variety. My favorite station was a dune-guarded beach of sand, which swept on either hand into pebbles and stones, until lost in the rocks heaped below the boulder cliffs that formed the horns of a crescent cove.

“At first I spent unmeasured hours looking over the expanse toward the terminal haze, and watching, as far out as I could, the great ridges rolling with the motion of wind and tide and open sea. At the farthest, they looked like mountain ranges, one behind the other; nearer, they were dark green hills with grayish summits. Nearer yet, one could see them reflect the sky, and sometimes the shore. Nearest of all, there was a visible upgathering before the rush, plunge, and sweep on the beach—all endlessly repeated and infinitely varied.

“The same perpetual repetition and variety appeared in the surge, as it flooded up the sands in a wide curve of plash, ripple, and foam; paused, retreated slowly, and then swept out, only to join with the drag of the bottom in opposing an incoming wave, until it rose high, plunged forward, and broke into the churning shallows, which were quickly covered by the main body of the wave as it flooded in.

“The outermost margin of almost every surge lingered long enough to make its record in a tiny ridge of sand and to reflect the light and color of the sky; then it sank into the sand, leaving a burden of pebbles and shells, stubble and seaweed, and the like. This flotsam and jetsam is so constantly swept up, drawn back, and tossed to and fro that I was not surprised to find the sands, under a microscope, composed entirely of such materials worn to powder. Behind me, the sea and the wind had heaped the sand into hills, that shore grasses burrowed into and held together. To left and right, the cliffs, although high and precipitous, were so scarred and worn by storm and wave that they looked almost primeval. Their tops were bared by the winds and corroded by the alternate action of heat and moisture; their granite sides were seamed and stained by the surge; and their feet were encumbered with fragments of their own wreckage that must have thundered down like avalanches. These rocks, whether flung forward in reefs like sculptured waves, or heaped like ruins, were naturally of a rich old rose, but they were often also gray with barnacles, or green with sea growths, and they showed even deeper in tone when submerged beneath the many pools that similarly mellowed and enriched the coloring of pebbles, shells, and weeds.

“My observation of the almost infinitely varied flora and fauna of the sea was, naturally, but superficial. Yet I saw many delightful plant and flower-like forms of dark or light green, yellow, brown, and red, all ceaselessly retinted by the ever-changing sky lights, and the reflection and refraction of the water. Sometimes they rioted in thick tangles among the rocks; again they softly swayed, outspread toward the rising and falling surface.

“The fauna I preferred to look at under water, for, on the whole, I found them grotesque, although I was bound to admire their adjustment to their environment, and to respect them as possible images of our remote ancestors. I was especially impressed with the constant warfare beneath the surface, as exemplified in the regular manœuvring of whole armies of tiny fish, only to have company after company routed by the dash and gulp of some larger enemy.

“The bottom of the sea I have never seen, save through the glass-bottomed boats of the Bermudas, but some day I hope for a diver’s view of the depths. It is easy to understand why the imagination of the poets should be stimulated by the idea of that cool, dim quietness, disturbed only by the swaying of verdure and the movement of great fish; of the richness of color, and the long, slow passage of time, measured only by the up-building of the coral.

“The open sea is, of course, familiar to us all, and yet its apparent boundlessness and immeasurable depth are ever new as the most immense thing in our knowledge—the sky belonging rather to the realm of the intangible. Mid-ocean always makes me feel the infinite continuity of time, the omnipresence of natural law, and a stimulus to greater harmony with its workings. Nowhere else are my ‘cosmic emotions’ so stirred. One gets something of the same impression on land wherever one can mark the ceaseless rising, pausing, and falling of the tide, under the mysterious governance of the moon. I am more than fond of the regular, gentle quality of the tide’s behavior, even if it does sometimes seem stealthy in its creeping toward and around the half-oblivious observer.

“I cannot similarly commend the behavior of the wind, when it opposes the tide in bluster on the sea or pushes it in tumult on the shore. The tide is a serene and responsible world power; the wind almost always performs its indispensable functions with all the eccentricity of genius. A breeze is positively attractive when ruffling the surface or sweeping spray from the wave-crests, and the wind itself is unobjectionable when it consistently urges the waves in one direction. But when it plays havoc with the clouds, or ‘ruffians on the enchafèd flood’ until it fastens upon the eluctant sea a behavior as bad and a reputation worse than its own—then I am by no means for it.