“And now that the sun is lavishingly scattering diamonds over the sea, now that the wrath of the waves breaks into sparkling laughter, let us run on the shore, and defy the spray.
“And so, sometimes flying from, and sometimes braving the wind, we rush into the uproar, we push on to that mass of rocks upon which the waves are crashing. Swelling at a distance, they rear themselves up—they are giants! Hardly have they reached the rocks than they crumble away, and the silly foam throws its flakes on the pine-trees holding on to the mountain side. This is succeeded by a heavenly calm.”
“The peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o’er-arching sky.”
“Down we gazed,” says Gosse, in one of his charming sea-side works, “on the smooth sea, becoming more and more mirror-like every moment, as the slight afternoon breeze died away into a calm, and allowing us from our vantage height to see far down into its depths. [pg 195]Presently I was gratified with the sight of one and then another of that enormous Medusa, the Great Rhizostome, urging its diagonal course at the shining surface. Its great bluish-white disc, like a globe of fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter, moves foremost by alternate contractions and expansions, which remind one of the pulse of an enormous heart, especially as at each stroke a volume of fluid is shot out of the cavity, by the impact of which on the surrounding water the huge body is driven vigorously forward. Meanwhile the compound peduncle, with its eight arms that hang down to the depth of two feet below, is dragged after the disc, its weight and the resistance of the water to its bulk combining to give that slanting direction which this great Medusa always assumes when in motion. We watched the great unwieldy creatures a long time, even till evening had faded into night, and were left almost the only wanderers on the hill. But what a night it was! So calm, so balmy, so solemnly still and noiseless; even the wash of the ripple at the foot of the cliff was hushed. There was no moon, but many stars were twinkling and blinking, and in the north-west a strong flush of light filled the sky, which was rapidly creeping along over the north cliffs. Then those cliffs themselves, all distinctness of feature lost in the darkness, stood like a great black wall in front of us, which being reflected in the placid sea so truly that no difference could be traced between substance and shadow, the dark mass, doubled in height, seemed to rise from a line only a few hundred yards off; and thus everything looked strange and unnatural and unrecognisable, although our reason told us the cause.
“Let us now scramble down the cliff-side path, tangled with briers and ferns, where the swelling buds of the hawthorn and honeysuckle are already bursting, while the blackbird mellowly whistles in the fast-greening thicket, and the lark joyously greets the mounting sun above us. Yonder on the shingle lies a boat newly painted in white and green for the attraction of young ladies of maritime aspirations; she is hauled up high and dry, but the sinewy arms of an honest boatman, who, hearing footsteps, has come out of his little grotto under the rock to reconnoitre, will soon drag her down to the sea’s margin, and ‘for the sum of a shilling an hour,’ will pull us over the smooth and pond-like sea whithersoever we may choose to direct him.
“ ‘Jump aboard, please, sir. Jump in, ladies. Jump in, little master.’ And now, as we take our seats on the clean canvas cushions astern, the boat’s bottom scrapes along with a harsh grating noise over the white shingle-pebbles, and we are afloat.
“First to the caverns just outside yonder lofty point. The lowness of the tide will enable us to take the boat into them, and the calmness of the sea will preclude much danger of her striking upon the rocks, especially as the watchful boatman will be on the alert, boat-hook in hand, to keep her clear. Now we lie in the gloom of the lofty arch, gently heaving and sinking and swaying on the slight swell, which, however smooth at the surface, is always perceptible when you are in a boat among rocks, and which invests such an approach with a danger that a landsman does not at all appreciate.
“Yet the water, despite the swell, is glassy, and invites the gaze down into its crystalline depths, where the little fishes are playing and hovering over the dark weeds.