182 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



watching it under moonlight, and awake to find it 

 enpurpled by the early sun. Some of its night 

 mysteries have vanished with familiarity. We know 

 which rock it is that greets the three-quarter tide 

 with clapping ; how the sound of thunder is pro- 

 duced ; and which wind sucks deepest at the sand, 

 or piles it up most in the place of the morning dip. 

 We know to an inch or two how high the tide will 

 come, and within ten minutes or so at what time it 

 will reach its climax. Yet the sea has not lost that 

 air of always attempting something it may not be 

 able to achieve, or of doubting whether to continue 

 its retreat into the very depths. 



It is the crispness of encounter between our own 

 element and another that we can never wholly con- 

 quer that makes the edge of the sea so fascinating. 

 On our shore that crispness is unusually accentuated 

 by form, colour, and change of organism. At the 

 headland a great purple scar descends sheer to the 

 sea. The waves leap in leaden blue, flinging up 

 their white caps which have their answer in storm- 

 time in straight, thin streams of red water pouring 

 from the cliff brow. This morning, when a pelting 

 south-easter riddled our tent as with bullets of rain, 

 the streams were flung back over the cliff edge and 

 went towering heavenward in trees of spray. In 

 the bend of the bay the shale and clay have slipped 

 seaward in a medley of round steps, like the clods of 

 snow that an avalanche produces, and the whole is 

 clothed with luxuriant verdure right down to the sea. 

 It is a tangle often waist-high purple knapweed, 

 clambering vetch, great pink - headed agrimony, 

 rounding sharper irregularities into a softness like 



