f
a corpse. The barque swung southward, and with the speed of a railway
engine rushed on to the stones; the pretty girl moaned, "Oh me!--oh
me!" She never saw her lad again until his battered body was in the
dead-house of the pier. A commonplace red-haired woman was in a
dreadful state of mind when she saw a large fishing-boat trying to run
for the harbour. Her husband and two sons were aboard, she said, so
she had reasons for anxiety. The boat was pitched about like a cork;
and presently one fearful sea fairly smashed her. The red-haired woman
fell down upon the sand, and lay there moaning.

Assuredly I am not inclined to imitate the Cockney frivolity of Barry
Cornwall, who never went to sea in his life, but who nevertheless
carolled the most absurdly joyous lays regarding the ocean, which made
him ill even when he merely looked at it. No; the true sea-lover knows
that there are terror and mystery and horror as well as joyousness in
the varied moods of the treacherous, remorseless, magnificent ocean.
Those who read this may see the unspeakable beauty of the opaline and
ruby tints that flame on the water when the sunset sinks behind the
Isle of Thanet. The bay at Westgate will shine like mother-of-pearl,
and the glassy rollers at the horizon will be incarnardined. That is a
splendid sight! Then those who are in Devon may pass sleepy days in
gazing on a vivid piercing blue that is pure and brilliant as the blue
of the Bay of Naples. In the lochs to the West of Scotland the
swarming tourists watch that riot of colour that marks the times of
sunrise and sunset. All these spectacles of suave magnificence are
imposing; but, for my own part, I love the grey water on the East
Coast, and I like the low level dunes where the bent grass gleams and
the sea-wind comes whispering "Forget!" All the gay days of the
holiday-places, all the gorgeous sunsets, the imperial noondays, the
solemn, glittering midnights are imposing, but the wise traveller
learns to see the beauty of all the moods of the wild changing sea.
Observe the commonplace man's attitude on a grey cheerless day, when
the sky hangs low and the rollers are leaden. "A beast of a day!" he
remarks in his elegant fashion; and he goes and grumbles in the vile
parlour of his lodging-house, where the stuffy odour of aged chairs
and the acrid smell of clumsy cookery contend for mastery. Yet outside
on the moaning levels of the dim sea there are mysterious and ghostly
sights that