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She floated with me close alongside, guided me to a restful grove midst shimmering weeds that made a soft and silken couch, where in the sweet stillness, lulled by the lap of gentle ripples against weed, or shell, or bending sea-flowers, I glided off to dreamless slumber.
The I idea of a veiled lady had, as I say, fascinated me. One Raxton fair-day I induced Winnie to be photographed on the sands, wearing a crown of sea-flowers in imitation of Rhona Boswell's famous wild-flower coronet, and a necklace of seaweed, with Frank and another boy lifting from her head a long white veil of my mother's.
Isis wears a Dorian tunic, fastened on her breast by a tasselled knot, an azure-coloured tunic bordered with silver stars, and an upper garment of the colour of the moon at moonrise. Her head is crowned with a chaplet of sea-flowers, and round her throat is a necklace of seaweeds, wet still with sea-water, and shimmering with all the shifting hues of the sea.
Though on the river, it is a half-marine place, with the typical sea-plants growing on the saltings by the shore. In summer I noticed that the graves below the grey sea-eaten, storm-furrowed walls of the church have wreaths of sea-lavender laid upon them. But there is not the same rich carpet of sea-flowers as at Wells or Blakeney.
"O, never mind, Eric, if you don't want to look at them," said Vernon, hurt at his brother's rough manner. "First you ask me to look, and then say 'never mind," said Eric impatiently; "here, show me them." The little boy brought a large saucer, round which the crimson sea-flowers were waving their long tentacula in the salt water. "Oh, ay; very pretty indeed. But I must be off to cricket."
I was sporting to and fro at another time when there was just such a panic among the fishes as I had seen before, and just such a scramble. Down, down came the fearsome looking object, while I mixed myself in with a mass of sea-flowers, and keeping perfectly still, was not noticed.
Oh! do you know Where the sea-flowers blow, Down deep in the ocean's bed? Where the shy plants hide 'Neath the swelling tide, And the Anemone lifts its head? Where the Nautilus frail, To set his sail, Creeps forth from the silver sand? Then come with me, And you will see The wonders of Coral-Land. "So this is Coral-Land!" exclaimed Sammy, wonderingly. "What a beautiful place it is!"
The soft sound lulled him to sleep, and when he awoke the boat was gone, and he stood among the Water Spirits, in their strange and lovely home. Lofty arches of snow-white coral bent above him, and the walls of brightly tinted shells were wreathed with lovely sea-flowers, and the sunlight shining on the waves cast silvery shadows on the ground, where sparkling stones glowed in the sand.
Submarine coral forests, of every hue, enriched with sea-flowers, anemones, and echinidæ, of unimaginable brilliancy; shoals of the brightest fish flashing in and out like rainbow gleams; shells of gorgeous lustre, moving slowly along with their living inmates; fairy foliage of fantastic sea-weeds stirred into tremulous motion by the gliding wave; upon these the enchanted gaze dwelt in the depths of the lagoon, while the surface glowed with every possible and exquisite tint, from the palest aqua marina to the brightest emerald; from the pure light blue of the turquoise to the "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue" of the sapphire; while here and there the glassy wave was broken up by patches of red, brown, and green coral rising from the mass below.
Young Galatea, nursed in the caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and shy as the sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick mountain hyacinths, and little Polyphemus led the way. He knew where violets and sweet narcissus grew, as well as Galatea where pink coralline and spreading sea-flowers with their waving arms.
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