TIE OPEN SEA 
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 wavesas 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 unruffied, 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 
Sea strife. 
Restlessness 
of the sca. 
