A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

I.
JANUARY.

How grandly those heavy waves are rolling in upon this long shingle-beach! Onward they come, with an even deliberate march that tells of power, out of that lowering sky that broods over the southern horizon; onward they come, onward! onward!—each following its precursor in serried ranks, ever coming nearer and nearer, ever looming larger and larger, like the resistless legions of a great invading army, sternly proud in its conscious strength; and ever and anon, as one and another dark billow breaks in a crest of foam, we may fancy we see the standards and ensigns of the threatening host waving here and there above the mass.

Still they drive in; and each in turn curls over its green head, and rushes up the sloping beach in a long-drawn sheet of the purest, whitest foam. The drifted snow itself is not more purely, spotlessly white than is that sheet of foaming water. How it seethes and sparkles! how it boils and bubbles! how it rings and hisses! The wind sings shrilly out of the driving clouds, now sinking to a moan, now rising to a roar; but we cannot hear it, for its tones are drowned in the ceaseless rushing of the mighty waves upon the beach and the rattle of the recoiling pebbles. Along the curvature of the shore the shrill hoarse voice runs, becoming softer and mellower as it recedes; while the echo of the bounding cliffs confines and repeats it, and mingles it with the succeeding ones, till all are blended on the ear in one deafening roar.

A LOOK-OUT.

But let us climb these slippery rocks, and picking our way cautiously over yonder craggy ledges, leaping the chasms that yawn between and reveal the hissing waters below, let us strive to attain the vantage-ground of that ridge that we see some fifty feet above the beach. It is perilous work, this scrambling over rocks, alternately slimy with treacherous sea-weed, and bristling with sharp needle-points of honey-combed limestone; now climbing a precipice, with the hands clutching these same rough points, and the toes finding a precarious hold in their interstices; now descending to a ledge awfully overhung; now creeping along a narrow shelf, by working each foot on, a few inches at a time; while the fingers nervously cling to the stony precipice, and the mind strives to forget the rugged depths below, and what would happen if—(ah! that “if!” let us cast it to the winds): another long stride across a gulf, a bound upward, and here we are.

Yes, here we stand, on the bluff, looking out to seaward in the very eye of the wind. We might have supposed it a tolerably smooth slope of stone when we looked at the point from the sea, or from the various parts of the shore whence we can see this promontory. But very different is it on a close acquaintance. It is a wilderness of craggy points and huge castellated masses of compact limestone marble, piled one on another in the wildest and most magnificent confusion. We have secured a comfortable berth, where, wedged in between two of these masses, we can without danger lean on one breast-high, and gaze over it down upon the very theatre of the elemental war. Is not this a sight worth the toil and trouble and peril of the ascent? The rock below is fringed with great insular peaks and blocks, bristling up amidst the sea, of various sizes and of the most fantastic and singular forms, which the sea at high-water would mostly cover; though now the far-receding tide exposes their horrid points, and the brown leprous coating of barnacles with which their lower sides are covered is broadly seen between the swelling seas.

Heavily rolls in the long deep swell of the ocean from the south-west; and as it approaches with its huge undulations driven up into foaming crests before the howling gale, each mighty wave breasts up against these rocks, as when an army of veteran legions assaults an impregnable fortress. Impregnable indeed! for having spent its fury in a rising wall of mingled water and foam, it shoots up perpendicularly to an immense elevation, as if it would scale the heights it could not overthrow, only to lie the next moment a broken ruin of water, murmuring and shrieking in the moats below. The insular peaks and blocks receive the incoming surge in an overwhelming flood, which, immediately, as the spent wave recedes, pours off through the interstices in a hundred beautiful jets and cascades; while in the narrow straits and passages the rushing sea boils and whirls about in curling sheets of snowy whiteness, curdling the surface; or, where it breaks away, of the most delicate pea-green hue, the tint produced by the bubbles seen through the water as they crowd to the air from the depths where they were formed,—the evidence of the unseen combat fiercely raging between earth and sea far below.

SEA-GULLS.

The shrieking gusts, as the gale rises yet higher and more furious, whip off the crests of the breaking billows, and bear the spray like a shower of salt sleet to the height where we stand; while the foam, as it forms and accumulates around the base of the headland, is seized by the same power in broad masses, and carried against the sides of the projecting rocks; flying hither and thither like fleeces of wool, and adhering like so much mortar to the face of the precipice, till it covers great spaces, to the height of many fathoms above the highest range of the tide. The gulls flit wailing through the storm, now breasting the wind, and beating the air with their long wings as they make slow headway; then, yielding the vain essay, they turn and are whirled away, till, recovering themselves, they come up again with a sweep, only again to be discomfited. Their white forms, now seen against the leaden-grey sky, now lost amidst the snowy foam, then coming into strong relief against the black rocks; their piping screams, now sounding close against the ear, then blending with the sounds of the elements, combine to add a wildness to the scene which was already sufficiently savage.

But the spring-tide is nearly at its lowest; a rocky path leads down from our eminence to a recess in the precipice, whence in these conditions access may be obtained to a sea-cavern, that we may possibly find entertainment in exploring.