They had now reached the crest of the hill, the deep-toned ceaseless roll of the surf-billows had long been in their ears.
‘That is Bondi,’ said Antonia, pointing southward. ‘I have heard that sound at intervals all my life. I used to dream of it when I was a little child.’
Ernest looked southward over a rolling, rugged down, flecked with patches of low underwood and heath, to where a broad, milk-white beach received the vast rollers of a boundless ocean. No point or headland broke the continuous distance of the immense dark blue plain which stretched to the utmost boundary of vision.
It was no day of gale or tempest, but there had been sufficient wind on this and the previous day to set in motion the unresting surges which failed not the year through to moan and thunder upon this broad clear shining beach. Great crags lay to the westward, shutting off this bay from the other portions of the coast, while a projection to the eastward tended to isolate the bay of surges. Far out, from time to time a shining sail came from the under-world and swept placidly towards the city, or a stately ocean steamer, with throbbing screw or mighty paddle, left a long line of smoke trailing behind her as she drove haughtily against wind or tide on her appointed course.
‘How one drinks in all this grandeur and loveliness of Dame Nature,’ said Ernest. ‘An instinctive constitutional craving seems satiated only by gazing at a scene like this.’
‘I fully comprehend the condition of mind,’ said Antonia. ‘You have been shut up at Garrandilla, where in time, except from information, you would begin to doubt the existence of the sea altogether.’
‘It is an astonishing contrast,’ assented Mr. Neuchamp. ‘How awfully hot it must be there now. I daresay old Doubletides is just coming in, half melted after his day’s work, looking for lost sheep—counting one flock, and ordering another to come in to-morrow.’
‘Surely it must be a terrible life,’ said Antonia apprehensively. ‘Is that why people in the bush go mad sometimes?’
‘It’s hard to say. I really don’t think he or Jedwood are even dull or distrait, or unduly impressed with the nothingness of existence. I think very energetic people have certain advantages. Their tuglike, unremitting habit of doing something keeps the machine going, until some fine day a cogwheel catches, or a rivet breaks, and one more human unit mingles its dust with the forgotten millions.’
‘Contemplation is very nice,’ said Antonia, ‘but I think it tends to lower the spirits, whereas work of any kind, with or without a purpose, tends to raise them; and now we must ride for it, or we shall be late for dinner, which I know from experience does not tend to raise papa’s spirits.’