The suggestion was curiously Dutch, and reminded me of a journey I once made down the great ship canal which runs from Holland to Ghent. A few minutes afterwards the carriage took a sharp turn to the right. The fields changed their character. Coarse pasture-land took the place of corn, and we were running upon a well-kept road bordered by wire fences, which seemed to lead directly to the estuary itself. And then, in a moment more, I got what was my first real glimpse of Osea. The carriage climbed a gentle eminence, and there, spread below me, for the first time I saw the wide salt marshes and the long, curving ribbon of road, submerged twelve hours in the day under fifteen feet of water, which is the only approach to Osea by land.
Beyond was the Island.
One saw at once, and this was the first and prevailing impression, that this was a real island. On either side beyond it was a stretch of gleaming sea, the Island forming the centre of the picture. Just below the road proper ended, and what is locally known as "The Hard" took its place.
The horse began to go more slowly, and in forty seconds we had left all cultivated lands behind and were travelling at a slow trot upon one of the most curious and interesting highways—for "The Hard" can claim to be that—in England.
It was dead low water, but this strange roadway was still covered here and there with little marine pools through which the horse—well accustomed to the journey—ploughed his way manfully. A long row of stakes, at an interval of every ten or twelve feet or so, showed the course of the road, and separated its firmness from the vast expanses of mud on either side. The stakes were all hung with brilliantly-coloured sea-weed, and decorated with arabesques of barnacles. Everywhere, here and there, were sullen tidal creeks, or rather lakes in the mud, which the receding tide had still left full of water. The word "mud" is an unpleasant one, and it suggests something very different from what I saw. Even the more technical and correct phrase, "saltings," hardly gives a reader who has not seen this peculiar and interesting feature of our English landscape, any adequate idea of the scene.
I have already spoken of the long stretches of water, now touched to red and gold by the rays of the afternoon sun, but all round them the whole of the "mud" was covered with the marsh zostera, or widgeon-weed, in every variety of delicate greens and yellows. It looked firm enough to the eye, and yet I knew well that a few steps away from the good, firm passage of "The Hard" would mean frightful danger. Once in the mud a man would sink well up to his waist. He would sink no farther, probably, for the saltings are not quicksands, but he would be held in a grip as firm as steel, and, unless rescued, would remain until the "cruel, crawling foam" crept up and engulfed him.
As we covered the first few hundred yards of the last stage of our journey I realised with a thrill that we had indeed left the confines of ordinary landscape, usual experience, very far behind. The plovers were circling and calling all around us with their slow, graceful flight, a colour symphony in dark black-green with flashes of white. Everywhere they called to each other with their melancholy voices and seemed quite unafraid of man. I could have shot half-a-dozen in the first three hundred yards from the carriage, had I been bent on slaughter.
The strange calls of the marsh-birds—not strange to me, however, who had spent many winters wild-fowling in various parts of the United Kingdom—were heard on either side. With flute-like tremolo the red-shanks—dove-coloured and white—pirouetted in quartettes over the marsh. I saw at least two varieties of the rarer gulls, and then, greatest excitement of all, not a hundred and fifty yards away stood three great herons, full three feet tall, standing like sable sentinels against the green.
And now, at last, we were actually a few yards from the island itself. A well-made road, bordered on one side by a sea-wall, grown over with thick grass and brilliant with wild flowers, ran inland. Upon the other side were smiling cornfields, and everywhere among the fields rose great elms.
From where the sea-road touches the Island, up to Mr. Charrington's home, the "Manor House," is exactly a chain mile. After the fields, the road turns sharply to the right, and proceeds along a fine avenue of shady trees until the "village" is reached.