“What shall I tell you of?”
“About your own bright home in the far-off land.”
“Shall I speak to you of the coralline sea that laves the tree-fringed shores of Africa?”
“Yes, yes, tell me of that.”
“Rippling up through the snakey roots of the mangrove trees, bathing the green branches that stoop down to kiss them—oh! ’tis a lovely sea, when the great sun shines, and the cyclone and squall are far away, calm and soft and blue. Yet not all blue, for on the coral flats it is a tender green, and grey where the cloud shadows fall on it. But all placid, all warm and dreamy as if fairies dwelt in caves beneath. Then the little green islands seem to float above the sea as if only just let down from heaven.
“Sometimes great sharks float upwards from the dark depths beneath, and bask on the surface with their fins above the water, and white sea-gulls come and perch upon them just as starlings do on sheep at home.”
“How strange! Don’t the sharks try to kill the birds?”
“No, they like it, and I think the birds sing to them and lull them to sleep, or that they tell them tales of far-off lands as I am speaking now to you.
“But on the coral reefs, where the sea, at a distance, looks so sweetly green, if you were there in a boat and looked away down to the bottom, oh! what a sight would be spread out before you! A garden of shrubs and waving flowers more lovely than anything ever seen on land.”
“How I should like to go there! But the interior of Africa is very gorgeous too, is it not?”