MILORD THE WEATHER 



blues almost touch — today the shallows and the 

 sea showed only two — but from the very ultimate, 

 opposite limits of blue visible to human eyes. Near 

 shore and out to the forty fathom line a half mile 

 beyond Gurnet's Rock there was uniform, unbe- 

 lievable, milky-pale turquoise, diluted almost to 

 negative blueness; from these outermost shallows, 

 along a line too even and sharp to be drawn by hu- 

 man instruments — from these to the horizon was 

 rich, dark, ultramarine. Most amazingly all day, re- 

 gardless of the altitude of the sun, these colors held 

 unchanged, unoxidized. 



The outer reefs were a narrow, continuous seam 

 of purest white, bisecting the turquoise, and Gurnet 

 was set in a smother of foam. As far as Nonsuch 

 was concerned there might as well have been no 

 outer reefs, for the windless rollers came in un- 

 checked, rising, curving, holding aloft for a full 

 second of eternity, and at last breaking on the 

 marble cliffs — with a ringing crash on exposed 

 rocks, a deep-mouthed thundering against the hol- 

 low caves and archways. 



South Beach was not recognizable as the beach 

 of yesterday ; the ten days of quiet wash had swept 

 the whole expanse clear of sargassum, so that the 

 turnstones and sandpipers had to glean from a 

 scanty supply of beach-fleas high up among the pros- 

 trate morning glories and sea lavender. Here, at 

 the upper edge of high tide, a straggly line of sun- 

 greyed weed still lay, like the tonsure of some aged 

 monk. 



163 



