BEACHCOMBING 65 



His possessions need never be mortgaged. The cost of 

 living is measurable by a standard adjustable to individual 

 taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of a little 

 manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates 

 for the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit — 

 if not the profession — leads one to ever-varying scenes, to 

 the contemplation of many of the moods of unaffected, 

 unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies luxuriously with 

 time, free from all the restrictions of streets, every precious 

 moment his very own ; afloat in these calm and shallow 

 waters there is a never-ending panorama of entertainment. 

 Coral gardens — gardens of the sea nymphs, wherein fancy 

 feigns cool, shy, chaste faces and pliant forms half-revealed 

 among gently swaying robes ; a company of porpoise, a 

 herd of dugong ; turtle, queer and familiar fish, occasionally 

 the spouting of a great whale, and always the company of 

 swift and graceful birds. Sometimes the whole expansive 

 ocean is as calm as it can only be in the tropics and 

 bordered by the Barrier Reef — a shield of shimmering 

 silver from which the islands stand out as turquoise bosses. 

 Again, it is of cobalt blue, with changing bands of purple 

 and gleaming pink, or of grey blue — the reflection of a sky 

 pallid and tremulous with excess of light. Or myriad hosts 

 of microscopic creatures — the Red Sea owes to the tribe 

 its name — the multitudinous sea dully incarnadine ; or 

 the boat rides buoyantly on the shoulders of Neptune's 

 white horses, while funnel-shaped water spouts sway this 

 way and that. Land is always near, and the flotsam and 

 jetsam, do they not supply that smack of excitement — if 

 not the boisterous hope — bereft of which life might seem 

 " always afternoon ? " 



These chronicles are toned from first to last by percep- 

 tions which came to the Beachcomber — perceptions which 

 lead, mayhap, to a subdued and sober estimate of the pur- 

 pose and bearing of the pilgrimage of life. Doubts become 

 exalted and glorified, hopes all rapture, when long serene 

 days are spent alone in the contemplation of the splendours 

 of sky and sea, and the enchantment of tropic shores. 

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