The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

He was not excited; but this could not be said of his companions; they betrayed their emotions in various ways. Mr. Hartwell and the miller were silent and apparently stolid; but the carrier and the smith talked.

Very few minutes sufficed to bring them to the summit of the cliff that commanded a full view seaward. At high tide the waves just reached the base of these cliffs, and the furthest ebb only left bare about a hundred feet of sand and shingle, with large smooth pebbles in ridges beyond the groins of the out-jutting rocks. But now it was a very different picture from that of the ordinary ebb that stretched away to the horizon under the eyes of our watchers.

The sandy breadth, with its many little ribs made by the waves, sloped into a line of sparse sea weed, tangled tufts of green and brown, and some long and wiry, and others flat with large and leathery bosses, like the studs of a shield. But beyond this space the rocks of the sea-bed began to show, There they were in serrated rows—rocks that had never before been seen by human eyes. Some lay in long sharp ridges, with here and there a peak of a miniature mountain, and beyond these lines of ridges there was a broad tableland, elevated in places and containing huge hollow basins brimming over with water, out of which every now and again a huge fish leaped, only to find itself struggling among the thick weeds. Further away still there was a great breadth of ooze, and then peak beyond peak of rocks, to which huge, grotesque weeds were clinging, having the semblance of snakes coiled round one another and dying in that close embrace.

Looking over these strange spaces was like having a bird's-eye view of an unexplored country of mountains and tablelands and valleys intersected by innumerable streams. The whole breadth of sea-bed was veined with little streams hurrying away after the lost sea, and all the air was filled with the prattling and chattering that went on through these channels.

And soon one became aware of a strange motion of struggling life among the forests of sea weed. At first it seemed no more than a quivering among the giant growths; but soon one saw the snake's head and the narrow shoulders of a big conger eel, from five to seven feet long, pushed through the jungle of ooze, to be followed by the wriggling body; there were congers by the hundred, and the hard-dying dog-fishes by the score, flapping and forcing their way from stream to stream. Stranded dying fish of all sorts made constant movements where they lay, and whole breadths of the sea-bed were alive with hurrying, scurrying crabs and lobsters and cray-fish. Some of these were of enormous size, patriarchs of the deep that had lurked for ages far out of reach of the fisherman's hook, and had mangled many a creel.

The weirdness of this unparalleled picture was immeasurably increased by its colouring, for over all there was spread what had the effect of a delicate crimson gauze. The whole of the sea-bed was crimson, for it was still dripping wet, and glistening with reflections of the red western sky. At the same time the great heat of the evening was sucking the moisture out of the spongy sea weeds, and there it remained in the form of a faint steam permeated with the crimson light.

And through all that broad space under the eyes of the watchers on the cliff there was no sign of a human being. They might have been the explorers of stout Cortez who stared at the Pacific from that peak in Darien. It was not until they had gone in silence for a quarter of a mile along the cliff path that they saw where the people of the village had assembled. The shore to the westward came into view and they saw that a crowd was there. The sound of the voices of the crowd came to their ears, and above it the hard, high monotone like that of a town crier uttering the words that Wesley had heard while yet in his room:

“There shall be no more sea. Repent—repent—repent.”

Once more they stood and looked down over the part of the coast that had just been disclosed—the eastern horn of Greta Bay, but no familiar landmark was to be seen; on the contrary, it seemed to them that they were looking down upon a new and curious region. The line of cliffs was familiar to their eyes, but what was that curious raised spine—that long sharp ridge stretching outwards for more than a mile on the glistening shore?

And what was that strange object—that huge bulk lying with one end tilted into the air on one shoulder of that sharp ridge?