United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The road itself is good, bordered on one side by the garden sweetness and the blossoms that foam like wave-crests over the walls, on the other breaking down to a steep hill-slope where all the wild flowers of spring star the grassy terraces, singing at the twisted feet of the olives that give them grey shadow. So the hillside runs steeply down to where at its rocky base the blue waves murmur.
Then and there I tried to clinch the matter and keep that mood. In the main I think I succeeded, though I had many lapses. For the present my veins tingled with the draught. The wind humming into the mainsail, the ghostly wave-crests riding up out of the void, whispered a low thrilling chorus in praise of adventure.
They did not strain themselves with swimming, but lay and let themselves be washed up with the wave-crests, and down in the water-dales, and had just as much fun as children in a swing. Their only anxiety was that the flock should be separated. The few land-birds who drove by, up in the storm, cried with envy: "There is no danger for you who can swim."
The setting sun sparkled on the wave-crests; thin fleecy clouds streaked the sky; everything gave promise of a satisfactory night, and a good haul of fish in the morning. With the quiet air of an amiable despot Manx nodded his venerable head. Up went the signal, and in a few minutes the fleet was reduced to order.
A few pictures and etchings hung on the other walls among them several wild seascapes reminding one a little of Richard Doyle's exquisite water colours in which green billows and foamy wave-crests took the shape of sea-fairies. Also some weird tree studies mostly gum and gidia, where gnarled limbs and bulbous protuberances turned into the faces of gnomes and the forms of strange monsters.
Its colors are different, too. Before it had all sorts of fanciful hues and shades, pale green and blue, silver, violet, almost rose sometimes, the colors of summer dreams. Now the dreaming time is over. The green of the wave-crests is luminous, the white and the blue have the gleam of polished steel, the violet and the rose are turned to deep, rich purple.
Slaps of spray from flying wave-crests blinded me with gouts of lake water, that was oddly warm till the cutting wind froze it to a coating of solid ice on my bare hands and stinging face, that I had to keep dabbing on my paddling shoulder to get my eyes clear in order that I might stare in front of my leaky, borrowed canoe.
It was like a landscape in Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
The world got darker, and the waves, breaking from the ship's bows, began to spill a luminous phosphorescence on the sea. I watched a little longer; and then the stars and the phosphorescent wave-crests glistened in a Mediterranean night. But I must hurry on.
Constance, with hands folded over the closed book on her lap, sat idly gazing on the blue expanse of water, watching the white little wave-crests that formed only to vanish so quickly.
Word Of The Day