Twice-Told Tales (55 page)

When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not
unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being
all discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer
monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the
effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary
appears to have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and
are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the
level beach. And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost
the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in
an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and
awfulness of the great deep. Thus by tracking our footprints in the
sand we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance
upon it when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always
make us wiser.

This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
your staff you may write verses—love-verses if they please you
best—and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be
inscribed thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the
heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon the sand without
the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea
will wash them out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now
(for there is room enough on your canvas) draw huge faces—huge as
that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands—and fit them with bodies of
corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder
island. Child's-play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale. But,
after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your
name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may
barely measure them, and three for the long strokes; cut deep, that
the record may be permanent. Statesmen and warriors and poets have
spent their strength in no better cause than this. Is it accomplished?
Return, then, in an hour or two, and seek for this mighty record of a
name. The sea will have swept over it, even as time rolls its effacing
waves over the names of statesmen and warriors and poets. Hark! the
surf-wave laughs at you.

Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the crags, making my
difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the
assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of
attitude. Some of them have their feet in the foam and are shagged
halfway upward with seaweed; some have been hollowed almost into
caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea, which can afford to spend
centuries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge
rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant's
tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown
tongue. We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian
race, or else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mystery
which, could I read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the
happier. How many a thing has troubled me with that same idea! Pass on
and leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue which might seem to
have been hewn through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording
passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with
tumultuous foam and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and
glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of
softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the
granite walls remain entire on either side. How sharply and with what
harsh clamor does the sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily
withdraws into its own depths! At intervals the floor of the chasm is
left nearly dry, but anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are
seen struggling to get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while
one rushes straight through, and all three thunder as if with rage and
triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray.
While watching this scene I can never rid myself of the idea that a
monster endowed with life and fierce energy is striving to burst his
way through the narrow pass. And what a contrast to look through the
stormy chasm and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond!

Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs.
Once, for example, I found a dead seal which a recent tempest had
tossed into the nook of the rocks, where his shaggy carcase lay rolled
in a heap of eel-grass as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself
from my eye. Another time a shark seemed on the point of leaping from
the surf to swallow me, nor did I wholly without dread approach near
enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death
from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a
bird—a large gray bird—but whether a loon or a wild goose or the
identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner was beyond my ornithology
to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry seaweed, with its
head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly
lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird
would soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves;
so I drew near and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a
remembrance. Another day I discovered an immense bone wedged into a
chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a
scymitar, bejewelled with barnacles and small shellfish and partly
covered with a growth of seaweed. Some leviathan of former ages had
used this ponderous mass as a jaw-bone. Curiosities of a minuter order
may be observed in a deep reservoir which is replenished with water at
every tide, but becomes a lake among the crags save when the sea is at
its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some
of which tower high beneath the water and cast a shadow in the
sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro and hide themselves among the
seaweed; there is also a solitary crab who appears to lead the life of
a hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place, and
likewise several five-fingers; for I know no other name than that
which children give them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to
such freaks, you may look down into the depths of this pool and fancy
it the mysterious depth of ocean. But where are the hulks and
scattered timbers of sunken ships? where the treasures that old Ocean
hoards? where the corroded cannon? where the corpses and skeletons of
seamen who went down in storm and battle?

On the day of my last ramble—it was a September day, yet as warm as
summer—what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin
but three girls sitting on its margin and—yes, it is veritably
so—laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the
warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on
the beach. Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with
their feet! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and
steal away again.

In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant
sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet,
glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with
the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down
from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles
and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean's hoary
beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at
anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew—four gentlemen in
roundabout jackets—are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an
inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any
meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his
sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.

From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily
over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has
given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with
the churl that should produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings
melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of
myself? It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough,
high precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of
sand. In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in
the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives
nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that
grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but
oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on
the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this
autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.
Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of
yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves
and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I
detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the
stern gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a
little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it
fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the
feast? A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft
of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By
this time the little rill has filled its reservoir again, and as I
quaff it I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet that he
gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water.

Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand and, basking
in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this
my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes
fancy that they have ears to hear them and a soul to sympathize. There
is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its precincts and flit around me
in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real
objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers,
and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in the tranquil
water as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here,
should I will it, I can summon up a single shade and be myself her
lover.—Yes, dreamer, but your lonely heart will be the colder for
such fancies.—Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds me here,
and in her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet
seem not gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so
that the Past might not find me!—Get ye all gone, old friends, and
let me listen to the murmur of the sea—a melancholy voice, but less
sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling? Of sunken ships and
whereabouts they lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered whose tawny
children are unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem
the stars of heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of all this.
What, then? Has it talked for so many ages and meant nothing all the
while? No; for those ages find utterance in the sea's unchanging
voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal
vicissitudes and let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul.
This is wisdom, and therefore will I spend the next half-hour in
shaping little boats of driftwood and launching them on voyages across
the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of
ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of
five hundred tons and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "Far
Cathay." Yet how would the merchant sneer at me!

And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a
thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock
mid-deep in the surf—see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars
and foams,—let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise
my oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and
got the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the
gentleman in seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable
roaring. His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is
hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh
what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary that he may lift
his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener!—But
hush! Be silent, my good friend! Whence comes that stifled laughter?
It was musical, but how should there be such music in my solitude?
Looking upward, I catch a glimpse of three faces peeping from the
summit of the cliff like angels between me and their native sky.—Ah,
fair girls! you may make yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my
turn to smile when I saw your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each
other's secrets.

The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will
come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of
these gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind.
Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink
gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been
what few can be—sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word
outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the
recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has
been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head
upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my
hands in triumph, and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and
claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all
day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries!