THE OPEN SEA 



115 



imagine vain things about the sea ; and more 

 than once writers have pictured it as a living 

 body a wrinkled monster writhing in a 

 cramped bed from which there is no escape. 

 And the waves as they come up the rocky coast, 

 flinging long arms upward to grapple with the 

 rocks, have been likened to companies and 

 legions of the deep sent to battle against the 

 rocky barriers companies utterly inexhaust- 

 ible and gaining vantage ground always by 

 wearing out their opponent. There is strife 

 between land and sea, to be sure, but it is the 

 warfare of unthinking elements and there is 

 no enmity about it or in it. Each side is 

 obeying the law of its nature without knowing 

 why or wherefore. It is continuous strife, too. 

 For the so-called legions of the sea are always 

 marching. The "flat sea" is a misnomer. 

 There is no such thing. At times the surface 

 is unruffled, light and color are thrown back 

 from it as from a burnished shield, but the 

 shield is never motionless. Even in the tropics, 

 where the surface may be unbroken for days at a 

 time, there is always the great, heaving "swell" 

 underneath. The restlessness of the sea is un- 

 ceasing. 



When the wind is rising over an unbroken 



