‘Don’t ride into the breakers, that’s all, as you tried to do last time we were there; if you and Waratah were carried off your feet, your poor old father would never see his pet again.’
‘How do you know? You silly old papa. Can’t we both swim?’ said the girl, laying her hand tenderly on his weather-beaten cheek; ‘you will make Mr. Neuchamp think that I’m as wild as a hawk, instead of being the sober-minded damsel that I really am. However, you need not be afraid of my running any foolish risks to-day.’
The morning had been clear, with that suspicion of chill which told that at no great distance from the coast there had been a strong change of temperature. In and around Sydney the atmospheric tendency had been softened into a composite of warmth, tempered with freshness wonderful to experience and exhilarating past all description.
The girl slacked the rein of her eager mare, and the excited horses swept along the smooth, winding, dark-red road. Before them lay the dark blue plain of ocean, fading into a misty, troubled haze which met the far horizon. Gradually they increased their distance from the gay gardens and villas of the more populous suburbs, the spires and terraces of the city.
‘This has always been a favourite excursion of mine,’ said Antonia. ‘From the moment we pass Waverley and front the ocean in all his wondrous strength and beauty, I feel as if I could shout for joy. Morahmee is very pretty, but the harbour has always a kind of lakelike prettiness to me; like the beds in a flower garden, while here——’
‘And here?’ said Ernest, smiling, as the southern maiden fixed her earnest gaze upon the wide glory of the unbounded sea, with a passion and tenderness of regard which he had never observed before.
‘Here,’ said she, ‘I feel lifted from my daily small pleasures and very minute cares into a world of thought and vision, exalted, infinite in grandeur and richness of colouring. My mind travels across that region of mystery and wonder which the sea has ever been to adventurous and practical minds, and all my heroes stand visibly presented before me.’
‘Please to introduce me,’ said Ernest.
‘I see Walter Raleigh, courtier, poet, warrior, sailor, statesman, and can mourn over him, as though I had seen that noblest of heads upon the cruel block but yesterday. I see Francis Drake with his crisp curls and dauntless spirit; I see Columbus ever calm, watchful, indomitable; Ponce de Leon, pacing up and down his lonely beach at Hispaniola, and can fancy him setting forth upon his half-melancholy, half-ludicrous expedition to la fontain de jouvences; even Bimini—oh! the many, many friends and companions that have ever been associated with the sea in my mind since my earliest childhood.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Ernest, translating an unacknowledged thought, ‘that you must be something like a cocoa-palm, or your own Norfolk Island pine, unable to exist out of hearing of the sound of the sea.’