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

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But while the satisfied sight dwells upon this transcendent scene, forgetting that it is not the only morning in earth’s history when it is to be lavished upon a favoured world, there is a sudden quickening of the throbbing light, along the sharp blue edge of the ocean runs a blazing rim of molten gold, and in a perfect silence, beneath which may be felt the majestic music of the spheres, the sun has come. Turn away the head; the trembling eyes cannot for an instant dwell upon that flaming fervent globe that at one mighty stride is already far above the horizon. The sweet face of the sea wears a million sparkling smiles of welcome—everywhere the advent of the Day-bringer has decked it with countless flashing gems. As if ecstatic in their appreciation of the banishment of night, a school of porpoises five thousand strong indulge in riotous gambols. Leaping high into the bright air, their shining, lithe bodies all a-quiver with pure joy of abundant life, they churn the kindly sea into foam, leaving in their mad, frolicsome rush a wide track of white on the smoothness behind them. So flawless is the calm that even the tiny argosy of the nautilus is tempted to rise and spread its silken sail, a lovely gauzy curve just a shade or so lighter in hue than the sapphire of the sea, and so discernible from that height to the practised eye. In quick succession more and more appear, until a fairy fleet of hundreds is sailing as if bearing Titania and her train to some enchanted isles, where never wind blows loudly. But lo! as if at a signal from a pigmy Admiral, the squadron has vanished bubble-wise. From where they lately rode in mimic pageant rises, ghost-like, a vast flock of flying-fish, the hum of whose vibrant wing-fins ascends to the ear. Many thousands in number, glistening in the sunblaze like burnished silver, they glide through the air with incredible speed, the whole shoal rising and falling in wave-like undulations as if in the performance of preconcerted evolutions. They have been flying upon a plane of perhaps twenty feet above the sea for some five hundred yards, and are just about to re-enter the water, when beneath them appear the iridescent beauties of a school of dolphin (not the dull-hued mammal, but the poet-beloved fish). At that dread sight the solid phalanx breaks up, hurled back upon itself in the disorder of deadly panic. In little groups, in single fugitives, they scatter to every point of the compass, a hopelessly disorganised mob, whereof the weaker fall to swift oblivion in the gaping jaws of their brilliant, vigorous foes beneath. The main body sheer off, sadly thinned, in a fresh direction, long quivering raiders launching themselves in hot pursuit upon their rear, devouring as they rush, until eaters and eaten disappear, and the battlefield lies in placid beauty as if never disturbed. One hovering bird, a “bo’sun,” with long slender tail and feathers of purest white, circles around on unmoving, outspread pinions, slowly turning his pretty head, with dark incurious eyes, upon the strange biped so awkwardly perched in his dominions of upper air. Whence and when did he come? A moment since and he was not. Did the vacant ether produce him? Yet another moment and he is gone as he came, leaving behind him a palpable sense of loss.