Читать книгу Priscilla's Spies - George A. Birmingham - Страница 10

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Rosnacree Bay is a broad stretch of water, but those who go down to it in boats are singularly at the mercy of the tides. Save for certain channels the water everywhere is shallow. At some remote period, it seems, the ocean broke in and submerged a tract of low land between the mountains which bound the north and south shores of the bay. What once were round hillocks rising from boggy pasture land are now islands, sloping eastwards to the water as they once sloped eastwards to green fields, but torn and chafed into steep bluffs where the sea beats on their western sides.

But the ocean’s conquest is incomplete. Its empire is disputed still. The very violence of the assault has checked its advance by piling up a mighty breakwater of boulders right across the mouth of the bay. Gathered upon sullenly firm based rocks these great round stones roll and roar and crash when the full force of the Atlantic billows comes foaming against them. They save the islands east of them. There are gaps in the breakwater, and the sea rushes through these, but it is tamed of its ferocity, humiliated from the grandeur of its strength so that it wanders, puzzled, bewildered, through the waterways among the islands. The land asserts itself. Things which belong to the land approach with contemptuous familiarity the very verges of their mighty foe. On the edges of the water the islanders build their hayricks, redolent of rural life, and set up their stacks of brown turf. Geese and ducks, whose natural play places are muddy pools and inland streams, swim through the salt water in the sheltered bays below the cottages. Pigs, driven down to the shore to root among the rotting seaweed, splash knee deep in the sea. At the time of high spring tides, in March and at the end of September, the water flows in oily curves or splashes muddily against the very thresholds of the cottages. It penetrates the brine-soaked soil and wells turn brackish. It wanders far inland through winding straits. The wayfarer, stepping across what seems to be a ditch at the end of a field far from the sea wonders to hear brown wrack crackle under his feet.

A few hours later the land asserts itself again. The sea draws back sullenly at first. Soon its retreat becomes a very flight. The narrow ways between the islands, calm an hour before, are like swift rivers. Through the cleft gaps in the breakwater of boulders the sea goes back from its adventurous wanderings to the ocean outside; but not as in other places, where a deep felt homing impulse draws tired water to the voluminous mother bosom of the Atlantic. Here, even on the calmest days, steep wavelets curl and break over each other, like fugitives driven to desperate flight by some maddening fear, prepared, so great is the terror behind them, to trample on their own comrades in the race for security. One after another all over the bay the wrack-clad backs of rocks appear. Long swathes of brown slimy weed, tugging at submerged roots, lie writhing on the surface of the ebbing streams. The islands grow larger. Confused heaps of round boulders appear under their western bluffs. Cormorants perch in flocks on shining stones, stretching out their narrow wings, peering through tiny black eyes at the withdrawal of the sea. On the eastern shores of every island, stretches of pebble-strewn mud widen rapidly. The boats below the cottages lie dejected, mutely re-reproachful of the anchors which have held them back from following the departed waters. Soft green banks appear here and there, broaden, join one another, until whole stretches of the bay, miles of it, show this pale sea grass instead of water. Only the few deep channels remain, with their foolish stranded buoys and their high useless perches, to witness to the fact that at evening time the sea will claim its own again.

Very wonderful are the changes of the bay. The southwest wind sweeps rain over it in slanting drifts. The islands show dimly grey amid a welter of grey water, breaking angrily in short, petulant seas, which buffet boats confusedly and put the helmsmen’s skill to a high test. Or chilly, curling mists wrap islands and promontories from sight. Terns, circling somewhere up above, cry to each other shrilly. Gulls flit suddenly into sight and out of sight again, uttering sorrowful wails. Now and again cormorants, low flying with a rushing noise, break the oily surface of the water with every swift downward flapping of their wings. Then the boatman needs something more than skill, must rely upon an inborn instinct for locality if he is not to find himself embayed and aground in some strange land-locked corner far from his home. Or, in the splendid summer days the islands seem poised a foot or two above the glistening water. The white terns hover and plunge, re-emerge amid the joyful callings of their fellows, each with some tiny silver fish to feed to the yellow chicks which gape to them from the short, coarse grass among the rocks. Curlews call to each other from island to island, and high answering calls come from the sea-saturated fields of the mainland. Small broad billed guillemots and puffins float at ease upon the water, swelling with obvious pride as they display the flocks of little ones which swim with infantile solemnity around them. Gulls cluster and splash noisily over shoals of fry. Then boats drift lazily along; piled high perhaps with brown turf, store of winter fuel for some home; or bearing stolid cattle from the cropped pasturage of one island to the untouched grass of another; or, paddled, noisily, carry a crowd of boys and girls home from school, mightily enriched no doubt with knowledge only to be obtained when the water is calm enough for children’s sea-going in the summer days.

On such days all the drama of the flowing and ebbing tides may be watched with ever increasing wonder and delight. The sea is caught by the islands and goes whirling down the channels. It is turned backwards by some stray spit of land and set beating against some other current of the same tide which has taken a different way and reached the same point in strong opposite flow. The little glistening wavelets leap to meet each other, like lovers reunited whose mouths are hungry for the pressure of glad greetings. There are places where the water eddies round and round, where smooth eager lips, rising from the whirlpools, seem as if they reached up for something to kiss, and are sucked down again into the depths with voiceless passion. Foot by foot the water gains on the rocks beside the channels, on the fringes of the boulders, on the stony shores, and covers the stretches of mud: