nvicted of
the impiousness of trying to fill the Bottomless Pit. To my childish
imagination the upturned wheelbarrows and wasted trucks and rails
always suggested the banks of the Red Sea after the awful disaster had
swept over Pharoah and his host. How the returning tide used to sweep
through that to us fathomless gulch! It made the old river seem ever
so much more wonderful, and ever so much more filled with adventure.

Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the very cauldron, and
let the swirling current carry me to the grassy sward beyond--along
which I would run till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to
the Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sunshine as I
went, and all ready for my scanty garments when I reached my clothing
once more.

Then came the great days when the heavy nor'westers howled over the
Sands--our sea-front was exposed to all the power of the sea right
away to the Point of Ayr--the days when they came in with big spring
tides, when we saw the fishermen doubling their anchors, and carefully
overhauling the holding gear of their boats, before the flooding tide
drove them ashore, powerless to do more than watch them battling at
their moorings like living things--the possessions upon which their
very bread depended. And then this one would sink, and another would
part her cable and come hurtling before the gale, until she crashed
right into the great upright blocks of sandstone which, riveted with
iron bands to their copings, were relied upon to hold the main road
from destruction. Sometimes in fragments, and sometimes almost entire,
the craft would be slung clean over the torturing battlements, and be
left stranded high and dry on our one village street, a menace to
traffic, but a huge joy to us children.

The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by the numerous
birds which at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant
food which lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were
thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers,
dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned
again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white
oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great
mussel patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a
bunch of them made as we bore them proudly home over our shoulders!
Then there were the big long-billed curlews. What a trium