Few things are less monotonous than the sea :
no lack of episode and incident, incessant rear-
rangement of elements, inexhaustible variety
of appearance and interest. From some cool,
breezy perch upon the rocks one can look long
away upon the watery vastitude, plural with
multitudinous waves all moving unanimous
toward the shore; note the color variegations,
inshore greens and offshore blues, and, contrast-
ing sharply with the indigo water, the white
suds with which the sea washes the face, of the
ragged ledge; blink at the dazzling brightness
which flashes sunward along the water, silver-
plating its repouss6 surface; observe the lazy
clouds loitering like sacred white elephants
between sun and sea, and darkening the sunlit
bosom of the deep with their vagrant shadows;
watch the wheeling and the diving of the gulls,
those shrill, hardy, fearless, and tireless nurse-
lings of the waves ; then wander down the white
beach strewn with dainty shells tinted in pink
and pearl, and see fairy rainbows flit through
the line of lather left for a moment by the re-
fluent wave upon the smooth wet sand ; mark the
swift process of a breaker's history, its brevity
from birth to death, its swelling rise, its grow-
ing prominence, its instantaneous upright poise,
its crystal curve, its falling crest, its plunge, its



BESIDE THE SEA 83

sobbing subsidence — a human life emblemed in
miniature. Off yonder the tilting bell-buoy
nods to all the thirty-two points of the compass,
tolling irregular warning above the rocks, that
church bells on the land may not have mariners'
knells to toll. Presently a dense mist drifts in
from everywhere, smothers sea -and land, and
shuts us in as with dull gray dripping curtains;
and in a little while we hear the huge muffled
voice of the fog-siren wading off through the
woolly atmosphere like an Indian on snowshoes
to find the groping ships and guide them.
