Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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For the next two days they stayed with her, exploring every corner, finding it truly, as the Master had said, a place of ten thousand for a refuge from all enemies. At last, when the patient mother-to-be had settled upon a shady pool beneath a huge overhanging crag as her favourite spot, they all bade her farewell, formed into line and departed, leaving her to the unfailing ministrations of the good Nurse Nature, with a promise to return again in about ten days.

On the second day of her loneliness a little son was born to her, a pretty, frolicsome creature about eight feet long, his tender, shining, dark skin elegantly mottled with splashes of grey, while the tiny furrows of his belly were white as curd. And the proud mother lolled in her cool corner feeding her babe from her bounteous breast, feeling supremely happy. He was a very wellspring of joy to her, every move of his lithe young body, every puff from his tiny spiracle, giving a new pang of delight. Nor did anything harmful come near. But she never relaxed her vigilant watch; not the faint splash of a gannet after a fleeting flying-fish but sent a shudder of apprehensive energy through her mighty frame.