DWELLERS OF THE SURF 115 



Day in and day out great walls of surging water flung them- 

 selves at the cliffs, dashed high in the air and fell back again, 

 roarinor. The tumult never ceased, the air echoed to its thunder: 

 high on the tops of the cliff great blocks of coral and sandstone 

 weighing many tons were piled in a long rampart where they 

 had been deposited by the ocean during storms. Some of these 

 blocks were more than a foot thick and several yards in cir- 

 cumference. Yet they had been tossed more than thirty feet as 

 though they had been but cordwood. But just before my eyes 

 was a cluster of delicate hydroids, flower-like animals with 

 tentacles so diaphanous and translucent as to be illusory. Near 

 by hung long tendrils of filmy algae, looking like the finest 

 Castilian lace, tiny interwoven threads that parted at the touch. 

 How could they survive the tons of surf that poured on them 

 every few seconds? Simply by giving way before it, by swaying 

 in the direction of the water, a passive resistance created eons 

 before Mahatma Gandhi was ever thought of. The water can 

 secure no hold on them. 



People can be divided into castes or groups, convenient classi- 

 fications by which we describe their modes of existence. We are 

 liberals or conservatives, fundamentalists or free thinkers, in- 

 dependents or stand-patters. Even yes-men have their place and 

 survive in a world of rugged individualists. This is true no less 

 of the denizens of the surf. The anemones and lacy algaes be- 

 long to the yes-men society; they persisted because they eter- 

 nally agreed with the superior force confronting them. To 

 resist or argue was unthinkable. The chitons, limpets and 

 gastropods were the fundamentalists and stand-patters; the 

 world changed and roared by them; they moved not a single 

 inch; clad in impenetrable armor, imprisoned behind walls of 

 ivory or unyielding calcium, they sat immobile; neither force 

 of wave, heat of sun or attack of enemy caused them to change 

 their mode of living one iota. Nor did this simile seem so un- 



