Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/266

 as we crossed a strip of level ground at the foot of the mesa and came to a stand on the edge of a long crescent-shaped bluff. I looked out at the fishing boats anchored a quarter of a mile from shore.

"Look down!" said Cornelia. "This is one of our show places. And you'd better sit down, if you are dizzy at all."

We both sat and peered over the undercut rim of the bluff. Fifty feet below us was the sea, deep, still, emerald green, transparent and quivering with waves of pale green light, down into misty recesses where its depth rendered it opaque. Up through the floating foliage of the seaweed, goldfish were swimming idly, big ones in the grand style, tremendously decorative, and thoroughly conscious, I thought, of the stunning effect of their gold in the green water. I was fascinated by them. I stretched myself flat, face downward, and pulled myself to the rim and studied them. A damnable thought was swimming up to me out of submarine caverns of "the unplumbed salt estranging sea."

At first my thought had no shape. It merely stirred in dark obscurity, like an irritated squid or devilfish. Then it emerged—with a golden