ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 151 



to the east and the west and fondle it. They hold 

 it close at the hour of flood, but hand does not 

 clasp hand about it, and the dry sand that links 

 it to the beach and the breakwater is not wet. 

 When the autumn winds shall come and the sea 

 shakes itself out of its summer lethargy and as- 

 serts its power and will not be denied, it is differ- 

 ent. At such times it roars over the beach and 

 the breakwater and drowns the white sands that 

 have kept the hands of its summer tides apart. 

 It marches deep green up Cohasset harbor and 

 brims the slender creeks. It passes their limits 

 at a leap, and swirls in defiant, dogged depths 

 over the drowned marshes. Then the island is 

 an island in very truth, and the sea takes his 

 love upon his broad bosom and rocks it, not al- 

 ways so tenderly. No man can guess the power 

 of the floods and the deep sea currents herded by 

 an easterly gale till he has seen the leaping of the 

 flood tide at such a time. 



Now it is a time of July gentleness and frip- 

 peries of color. The salt marsh, to be sure, 

 never lacks these, even in the dead of winter, 

 when high tides continually load it with sea ice, 

 and then receding leave it piled with fantastic 

 hummocks and pressure ridges like the Arctic 



