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

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For one blissful week there was perfect peace. Then came a morning when the glorious blue sky grew grey and greasy, then black as soot. A deathlike silence fell. The harmless fish and other denizens of the reef crept into crevices of the coral, and all the birds fled wailing away. She was filled with an undefinable dread; a loneliness unfelt before shrank every fibre with fear. Moving uneasily about the restricted area of her shelter, her calf clutched closely under her fin, she saw spear after spear of crimson flame cleave the swart heavens, while immense boulders of red-hot rock fell in a hurtling hail around her. A seething torrent of molten lava amid a dense fog of steam fell with a deafening hiss into the sea. Desperately she sought to descend, but forgetting the bottom so near, dealt herself a fearful blow. Then in frantic fear for her youngling, she rushed, holding him closer to her breast, around the barrier, seeking the passage through which they had entered. Almost exhausted with her exertions, she found it, fled along its windings with the rock heaving and groaning around her, and at last plunged exultantly through the boiling breakers down, down into peace. But unsatisfied, still she toiled on to leave that accursed place far behind, nor rested except to breathe her offspring until she was a hundred miles away.