Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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I gazed through the chilly light which was gradually spreading itself around, and there was the clear outline of what seemed precipitous high land coming out of the sea to meet us. I could not distinguish the break upon the reef amid the circumambient foam driven in clouds before the wind; but I could hear a low rumbling sound, gradually gaining in force and then dying away again, which had a cadence of its own.

The sun rose like a molten globe shorn of his beams and powerless to outstare a man, but giving a pale effulgence like that of the moon. As the spectral light crept up towards the zenith it disclosed a sight which has often appalled stout hearts, though forming in itself a magnificent spectacle—a storm-tossed sea breaking in mad fury upon the South Sea reef—one of those mighty fabrics of coral which myriads of tiny architects, the conquerors of the ocean surge, have raised as natural breakwaters for all the islands of the Fijian archipelago.

The gale was hurrying us with uncontrollable power upon Viti Levu, the largest island of the group, and its girdle of coral, on which the furious sea was breaking in magnificent desolation. The sound came to us now like a roar of fierce anger, now with a measured dirge-like tone, and now in melancholy strains mellowed by distance, tristfully surgent like those of an Æolian harp. These reefs usually encircle the islands at a distance of from half a mile to two miles. Within the barrier the water is as smooth as a lake, but the trade winds, which blow for nine months in the year upon the shore, send the long rollers of the Pacific against the reef, which varies from 5ft. to 30ft. in width. Dashing upon this impregnable barrier, they rise in columns of rosy foam often to a height of from 20ft. to 50ft., and, glittering in the rays of the tropical sun, fall like obelisks of diamonds. A long line of silent ripples is often at first the only indication of the presence of one of these spines of coral and volcanic rock; then the rollers come against them with a sound like a thunder-clap, and the waters, broken into milk-white foam, hurry along the side with wonderful impetuosity, like an immense jet of vapour, until, meeting with a greater obstruction, a column is thrown high into the air, and forming an aqueous arch, bursts suddenly into spray.