The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

The sea to the eastward of the island was heavily sown with reefs; the great reef that had destroyed the Rhone lay due south; northward there were also reefs; only to the west was the approach to the island safe.

“Here we are,” said Yves, as he tramped his way out of the bushes and on to the northern beach, the Moco following.

Yes, there were reefs here, indeed, just a dark bloom under the blue water, just a trace of snow; a pencilling of foam shewed where the murderers of the sea lay hidden, and the sea was beautiful here, more beautiful than to the south of the island, for the reefs and the shallows were continually changing in the wonderful light of the tropics to suit the hour of the day; colours chasing colours, sky blue parallels of sea and heather purple lines of reef greeting the dawn, cornflower-coloured spaces of water flashing the sky back like mirrors at noon, whilst at sunset, in those wonderful sunsets that reach to the zenith, all this stretch of sea and reef would be a field of beaten gold.

Just as the ever-changing light of day made ever-changing beauties, so did the ever-changing air, and ever-changing tide; at low tide with a strong breeze every reef would speak and you would hear a sound that once heard you would never forget, the song of a hundred tiny shores, the tune of the reefs. Sometimes in those great low tides in which we fancy the moon and the sun hauling together at the heavy blue robe of the sea, as if to make her shew her hidden armour and her scars, the reefs would be fully exposed, razor-edged, hungry, and lean. In these low tides you would see great fish betrayed by the sea and trapped in the pools, flinging themselves in the air like curved silver swords. Conversely, in the great high tides you might have sailed a battleship in fancy over the unclouded water.

Yves, leaving the beach, began to clamber along a ledge of rock that went straight out from the shore like a natural pier; Gaspard followed him, treading the seaweed under foot. There were no gulls here; the fishing ground of the gulls lay to the southeast, but so small was the island that you could still hear their voices on the air that had now become absolutely windless.

The water lay deep and clear on the left of the ledge of the rocks, but Gaspard had eyes for nothing but the slippery seaweed under foot.

These reefs are as a rule so rough, so serrated with keen-edged spines of coral, that bare-footed, as Yves was, to walk on them would be impossible; but this great ledge was comparatively smooth; it lay above high tide for the first hundred yards or so, and then, shelving slightly, lost itself at high tide beneath the water.

The tide since its turn had already fallen two feet and the hidden part of the reef was beginning to shew. It was plain to the eye that the whole reef formed the edge of an immense bath-like basin, an elliptiform lagoon, the longest diameter of which lay from north to south.

Yves led the way till they were fifty yards from the shore; then he stopped, turned, and pointed into the green clear water to the left.

The lagoon, unruffled by a breath of wind, lay lit to its heart and burning like a vast and flawless emerald, its floor of salt white sand, though invisible to the eye, was still reached by the sun rays and flung them back in a million sparkles that combined to form the water’s dazzling soul.