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

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A little bird, grey of feather and with long, slender legs, drifted softly out of the surrounding void, and alighted daintily upon this glistening earth-bud with a sweet, low chirp of content that also sounded like a note of welcome. With delicate, mincing steps the graceful visitor pattered over the crisp sand, prying with keen black eyes and fine, nervous beak into every cranny and worm-hole, and finding apparently many a tasty morsel to reward her visit. Evening brought another guest on family cares intent,—a huge turtle, whose broad, buckler-like carapace rose shining out of the limpid wave like the dome of some naiad’s pearly palace under the silvern glow of the broad moon. But instinct, that infallible guide to the lesser intelligences of animate creation, warned the expectant parent that here, for some time at any rate, no safe cache might be found for the deposit of those precious round eggs of hers. So, after a leisurely survey of the scanty circlet, she dragged her huge bulk lingeringly into the clear waters again, and was immediately transformed from a crawling reptile into a swift and graceful creature that cleft the waves like an arrow. Thenceforward many visitants came and went, birds, crustacea, and fish, most of them exchanging benefits with the new land, although any nascent germs of vegetation lay biding their appointed time until the sea should finally refrain from flinging an occasional lustration across the smiling face of the new-born islet. In due process of the suns, however, a wandering coco-nut came with many a backward sweep and much dallying upon the outskirts of the surrounding reef among the bewildering eddies, until at last a friendly wavelet caught it and spun it up high and dry, where it lay at rest, kept from rolling seaward again by a little ridge left in the sand, the impress of a more than usually vigorous breaker. In that soft scene of mild delight day succeeded day like the passing of a sunny afternoon dream, undisturbed by any clamorous voice of wind or hoarse note of ravin from the sea. Balmy airs, like the sweet breath of love, scarcely dimpled the serene face of the blue ocean around. In a beneficent flood the golden sunshine lavished its treasures upon the lonely ocean beneath by day, and by night the unaging glory of the silver stars, among whose countless hosts the quiet beauty of the lovely moon pursued her stately way, was perfectly reproduced in the same limitless mirror.