Page:Brown·Bread·from·a·Colonial·Oven-Baughan-1912.pdf/86

 hour by hour almost, there was always a different sea. Now it would be rough and bright, then bright and smooth; now streeted with gold by the early sun, now one field of broad blue, or gallant blue-and-white; silver-and-green that flashed, or bloomy hyacinth, surely the true —wine-dark. Sometimes it really looked asleep and dreaming, sometimes it glittered with argosies of sunbeams—or was it with “innumerable laughter”? Now, it seemed sobbing and unquiet as with grief; now it meant business, it was stern, fierce, even ferocious; now again it lay all molten silver, soft, tranquil, and at ease. Best of all, whatever its mood, it was always itself, always the living sea—restless, tireless, great: incomprehensible, yet the dear sister-soul of Man.

Then there was the excitement of landing through the surf—the waiting in smooth water between two huge white-crested breakers; the rowing back to meet the one astern, till it hung almost over us, and swamping seemed inevitable; the sharp swing skyward of the stern; the breathless, momentary poise and pause; then, the tremendous thump down, as the great wave passed beneath the boat; and, finally, our victorious rushing shoreward, upon its swift streams of snow. There were, too, the various, felt though unseen, glories of the air, that other wide ocean whose mercies were perpetually about us—its first freshness of a morning, its sweet intensity of cleanness when we were well out at sea, its evening aromas of sun-baked turf, warm tauhinu, and spicy smoke; and the splendour of its unreined vigour, when, rounding the sails like apples and piling the bright water into hills, it dashed us along