A SALT BREEZE. 171 



ity, it is salt to the ear no less than to the smell.] 

 One fancies he hears the friction and clashing of the 

 invisible crystals. A shooting avalanche of snow 

 might have this frosty, beaded, anfractuous sound. 

 The sands and pebbles and broken shells have some- 

 thing to do with it ; but without these that threaten- 

 ing, serrated edge remains, the grainy, saline voice 

 of the sea. 



'T is a pity the fabulous sea-serpent is not a reality. 

 The sea seems to imply such a monster, swimming as 

 a leech swims, with vertical undulations, splitting the 

 waves, or reposing across them in vast scaly coils. 

 There is something in the sea that fills the imagina- 

 tion of men with the image of these things. The sea- 

 serpent will always be seen by somebody, because the 

 sea itself is serpentine, a writhing, crawling, crested, 

 glistening saurian with the globe in its embrace. How 

 it rises up and darts upon you ! In storms, its breath 

 blackens and blights the shore vegetation ; it devours 

 the beach and disgorges it again, and piles the shore 

 with foam, like masses of unwashed wool. Often a 

 hissing sibilant sound seems to issue from under the 

 edge of the bursting wave. Then that ever-recurring 

 rustle calls up a vision of some scaly monster uncoil- 

 ing or measuring its length upon the sands. I was 

 told of two girls, in bathing-suits, sitting upon the 

 beach, where the waves, which were running very 

 high, reached them with only their laced and em- 

 broidered edges ; then, as if it had been getting ready 

 for a spring, a huge wave rushed up and snatched 



