Читать книгу A Sack of Shakings онлайн

14 страница из 54

For some time we lay silent in great content. Every thought, every feeling, as far as I was concerned, was just merged in complete satisfaction of all the senses, although at times I glanced at my grave companion, wondering dreamily if he too, though accustomed to these delights all his life long, could feel that deep enjoyment of them that I, a wanderer from the bleak and unsettled North, was saturated with. But while this and kindred ideas lazily ebbed and flowed through my satisfied brain, the bright expanse of sea immediately beneath us suddenly started into life. A school of porpoises, numbering several hundreds, broke the surface, new risen from unknown depths, and began their merry gambols as if the superabundant life animating them must find a vent. They formed into three divisions, marched in undulating yet evenly spaced lines, amalgamated, separated, reformed. At one moment all clustered in one central mass, making the placid sea boil; the next, as if by a pivotal explosion, they were rushing at headlong speed in radiating lines towards a circumference. As if at preconcerted signal, they reached it and disappeared. Perfect quiet ensued for perhaps two minutes. Then, in solemn measure, solitary individuals, scattered over a vast area, rose into the air ten, fifteen, twenty feet, turned and fell, but, at our distance from them, in perfect silence. This pretty play continued for some time, the leaps growing gradually less vigorous until they ceased altogether, and we saw the whole company massing themselves in close order far out to sea. A few minutes, for breathing space I suppose, and then in one magnificent charge, every individual leaping twenty feet at each bound, they came thundering shoreward. It was an inspiring sight, that host of lithe black bodies in maddest rush along the sea-surface, lashing it into dazzling foam, and sending across to our ears a deep melodious roar like the voice of many waters. Within a hundred yards of the shore they disappeared abruptly, as if an invisible line had there been drawn, and presently we saw them leisurely departing eastward, as though, playtime over, they had now resumed the normal flow of everyday duties.