The Ship of Coral

the darkness, by words from the truth, we have created an artificial world in the midst of the true world. In the wind, in the sunlight, in the sea, there

the sea, through all the claptrap of language and thought come the voices; t

, is but the pathetic imitation, an echo dulled and muff

he language of the eternal things is louder far than to t

n shore, he had been held apart by his fellows or protected by the common things from the eternal truths. L

ure had landed on the island and stood around him viewless and perplexing him with whispers. Fear, Air,

rom this knowledge; a debased language in which the word "sea" stood for wharves and ships, stokeholds and furnaces, decks and glimpses of ocean had paralysed his thought and numbed it. Twelve hours of

at watching the sun sink in the western sea, the word "sunset" or the word "sea" never occurred to him. He was thinking wit

nd Distance were there at this marriage of sun and ocean; colour, size, limit, all were banished from

plendour of the sea answering the splendour of the sky. For a moment time44 seemed to ce

eaping like a woman under a burning kiss, t

ax and the wax had been cast into a cauldron of boiling gold. Then, as if millions of infinitely tenuous golden veils we

kling and spraying

re night had taken possession of the world

f the tent; the opiate of the sea air and his weariness brought sleep

akened by

blow on a drum. He raised himself on his arm; sleep had fallen fro

g except the weary washing so

tance. Boom! A monstrous sound in that desolate pla

judging by the sound, the dr

s face he crept out from under th

ight flooded the sea and brimmed over on to the foam. So solid was the sky with stars that the palm fr

again, from very far away

en away leagues across the sea to beat

or a moment in the air, and then fall, smashing the waves to foam, with a noise that reverberates for miles. But he knew nothing of the sea-bats, and he stood

blue. Then it bloomed into warmth and kindness of tone. Just as children hold buttercups to one another's faces to see the

away, dissolving in blueness and infinite distance, the sun was peeping across the water and then suddenly,46 as though he had take

is hair, you would have seen the stroke of the sun's hand on his face,

moment and the gulf to Galveston and Tampico be turned from a lake of stars to a living sapphire, the Caribbean would leap alive from Grand Cayman to Darien, from San Juan to La Guaira, alive and burning and blue. The wind that was blowing in Gaspard's face, a wind that came over the blue and lau

ics; just now he did not even see the sunrise and its splendour, he had, for a moment, forgotten even his fears; his eyes were fi

drifting buoy. It was drawing nearer, the current was s

was

of shape as it twisted to the slap of the waves, n

reams and terrors! The cry that escaped

g at the place where the footsteps of Yves had been, scrambling over the coral till he reached the extre

ple of a pond. It was empty and drifting towards the islet, but it would not touch the beach, it woul

erboat, and never to Gaspard's eyes had anything appeared so gay

air, he could see the overlapping planks, and now as he stood preparing to take to the water and swim to it, the terror

th wrath at his attempt to escape, and, for a moment, the want of power48 that comes to us in

waves hit him in the face like wet hands trying to drive hi

arm's length away, and now, he was grasping the starboard thwart. She heeled over slightly as he got his elbow on the thwart and peeped in. She was empty of everything but the bottom boards an

d to the stern, boarde

would have to land to get his clothes and