noon
The long myrtle-shadowed village was thronged with its summer population ; -- the big hotel could hardly accommodate all its guests ; -- the bathing-houses were too few for the crowds who flocked to the water morning and evening . There were diversions for all , -- hunting and fishing parties , yachting excursions , rides , music , games , promenades . Carriage wheels whirled flickering along the beach , seaming its smoothness noiselessly , as if muffled . Love wrote its dreams upon the sand ... ... Then one great noon , when the blue abyss of day seemed to yawn over the world more deeply than ever before , a sudden change touched the quicksilver smoothness of the waters -- the swaying shadow of a vast motion . First the whole sea-circle appeared to rise up bodily at the sky ; the horizon-curve lifted to a straight line ; the line darkened and approached , -- a monstrous wrinkle , an immeasurable fold of green water , moving swift as a cloud-shadow pursued by sunlight . But it had looked formidable only by startling contrast with the previous placidity of the open : it was scarcely two feet high ; -- it curled slowly as it neared the beach , and combed itself out in sheets of woolly foam with a low , rich roll of whispered thunder . Swift in pursuit another followed -- a third -- a feebler fourth ; then the sea only swayed a little , and stilled again .