CHAPTER VI 



Dwellers of the Surf 



There was one thing on Inagua that was inescapable. When 

 all other memories of the island will have faded, merging indis- 

 tinctly with a horde of other recollections, and when the shape 

 of all the birds, animals and people with whom I had contact 

 will have become but hazy shadows and dim evanescent figures, 

 I shall need only to close my eyes in a quiet place to bring it all 

 back once more. Then rushing through the darkness will come a 

 sound, a roaring sighing sound, low, sibilant, or at times throaty 

 and powerful, increasing and falling in tone, on and on in end- 

 less reiteration. It is the sound of the surf as I heard it day after 

 day against the rocks near my dwelling, swirling, surging, boil- 

 ing, boisterous, angry, or gentle and murmuring, week after 

 week, hour after hour until its cadences were etched in indelible 

 gravings on the cells of my brain. Day and night it set the tempo 

 and the mood of the island; calm and soothing when the wind 

 was low; deep and fretful when the trades grew angry and 

 topped the waters with white caps. 



The surf was the tone background of island existence. The 

 mere sound of breaking waves is all that is necessary to bring 

 back to memory the long succession of tropical days steeped in 

 dazzling sunlight, the recollections of the hot still bush and the 

 shimmering, dancing heat waves, of bending palms leaning 

 seaward over pure white beaches, of curving sand dunes, barren 

 and white in the glare, of stark fingers of cacti, mounds of 

 prickly pear and gaunt thorn trees, the pale ghostly hue of 

 sedge and sea grape, the darker verdure of lignum vitae and bay 

 lavender. It was the theme music to the velvety atmosphere 



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