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

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For many years Pacific mariners, both of white and dusky races, had known and dreaded the dangers of the Marae Reef. It lay right in the track of vessels between Opolu and Nieuwe, only visible to the seaman’s eye from the mast-head on calm days as a slight discoloration of the brilliant blue sea that everywhere else bared its unstained depths of single colour. With a fresh Trade blowing there was no difficulty in locating it, for it made its menace heard as well as seen. The long, indolent Pacific swell, sweeping majestically from continent to continent across half the world, met this mushroom growth in its mighty path and immediately raised its awful voice in thunderous protest against such an addition to the already innumerable dangers of that perilous region. Not only so, but as if it would uproot the intruder from its massy foundations that broadened down into the matrix of the world, the wrathful wave arose in gigantic billows of foaming white, in the midst of which momentarily appeared the defiant summits of living rock, steadfast and secure, while the ageless ocean vainly sought to uproot it from its eternal base. But such scenes were of the most infrequent occurrence. The normal conditions of those waters were peaceful, and the swell scarcely heavy enough to raise even a solitary breaker once a day. And as the scanty trade between the islands grew less and less, the danger of the reef, nay, almost its very existence, passed out of men’s minds.