SEA-WRACK 81 



of values, but a subtle, all-wonderful transfor- 

 mation. Pelee should still have loomed high, 

 the craters and gullys were but a short distance 

 away and indeed all were faintly discernible. 

 A faint veil of azure had intervened. There 

 was no wind, it had neither drifted in from 

 the sea nor frayed from the edges of the 

 dense cloud which enveloped the peak. So 

 evanescent, so delicate was this still-born haze 

 that the crater cloud was only softened, not 

 eclipsed. From the strong sweep and stroke 

 and virile outline of a Brangwyn or the 

 gnomesque possibilities of a Rackham, the great 

 mountain softened to the ethereal air cas- 

 tle of a Parrish. Between winks, as imper- 

 ceptibly as the coming of twilight to a cloudless 

 sky, the vision changed to a veritable Isle of 

 Death. This seemed too evanescent, too ether- 

 eally fragile to endure, and yet for moment 

 after moment it held and held — and then the 

 mountain — which was yet but the shadow of a 

 mountain — this itself dissolved, and over the 

 gently heaving sea, were neither lava flows nor 

 cinders, gorges nor ruins, but only a faint 

 pearly-white mist, translucent, permeable, float- 

 ing softly between sea and sky. Martinique 



