United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was all soft and dark with pillars of purple light that struck through the fretted blue, and the dark shadows of the leaves. All hushed and no living thing save the hesitating patter of some bird among the fir-cones. He struck through the wood and came out on to the Common. You could smell the sea finely here a true Glebeshire smell, fresh and salt, full of sea-pinks and the westerly gales.
And fine as it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a northern beach. That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with the winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the sky-line of sea is jagged.
But the crossing was at length achieved, and on a patch of sea-pinks he dried himself perfunctorily and hastily put on his garments. Old Bill, who seemed to be regardless of wind or water, squatted beside him and whistled through his teeth. Above them hung the sheer cliffs of the Huntingtower cape, so sheer that a man below was completely hidden from any watcher on the top.
On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pincushion, and a special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, and another even more special which she had thought would make a very nice place for a watch to curl up in. "Tell me, grandma," said Kezia.
But the cloud was on them, soft films of gauzy mist with the sun still bright overhead. Then quickly-rolling folds of dense white cloud blotted out everything but the path on which they stood. The gorse and blue-bells and sea-pinks at their feet drooped suddenly wan and colourless, as though stricken with mortal sickness, and wept sad tears.
Higher still, on a spur of rock, Patrick Lavelle had laid the clay for his potatoes. He had carried it on his shoulders, every clod, and Moya had gathered the seaweed to fertilise it. She had her small garden there, too, of sea-pinks and the like, which rather encouraged the Islanders in their opinion of her strangeness.
And fine as it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a northern beach. That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with the winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the sky-line of sea is jagged.
And then, the nests we discovered! nay, the nests that at times we walked among, picking our steps like egg-dancers! nests boldly planted on the bare rock ledges; nests snugly hidden among the clusters of blue thrift and the massed sea-pinks.
Where you and I discover sea-pinks only, and hear only the wash of the waves, she would go on midsummer nights and find flowers of every colour spread, and hundreds of little lights moving among them, and fountains and waterfalls and swarms of small ladies and gentlemen, dressed in green and gold, walking and sporting among them, or reposing on the turf and telling stories to the most ravishing soft music.
The sea was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore, or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the Smugglers of Trezent or the Gold-laced Pirates of Rafiel.
Word Of The Day