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

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Still, heedless of either elemental strife or serenest calm, the microscopic masons toiled on, each in its tiny cell content to fulfil the conditions of its being and to add its infinitesimal quota to the world-fragment; then, having justified its existence, to pass into other forms of usefulness by means of the ever-active alchemy of Nature. But for those of the builders whose lot it was to reach the summit of the fabric which their united efforts had reared there was another ending, or rather transmutation. A swift oblivion awaited them, a sudden severance from their life-work, as the reef, now awash, was left temporarily dry by the ebbing tide. Yet all around them uncounted myriads of their co-workers toiled eagerly upward to the same personal fate, the same collective achievement, each adding some essential to form the perfect whole. Thus from generation to generation the fabric grew, so slowly by man’s reckoning, so swiftly according to the hasteless chronology of creation, until there came a day when, after a more placid period even than usual, the bared surface of the reef became covered with a dazzling floor of minutest fragments, ground from the countless pinnacles below by the unceasing attrition of the waves. Tide after tide lapped the infant beach, with kindliest murmur as of tender welcome, ever bringing fresh store of shining sand, until at low water of the spring tides there was a new spot of earth’s surface gleaming white in that expanse of blue, like a snowflake new-fallen upon a vast sapphire.