For the rest of the
day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those
who went and came between the beach and the village - men in
blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in
grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets.
During the latter part
of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me,
a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to
the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some
sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles
again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught
of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The
great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was
almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing
it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men
who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great
crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink
in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare and
exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean
that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled
up my prayer - which I was careful not to repeat aloud - was,
Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!
The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport,
turned crimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became
luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues
away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to
violet. The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the
deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire;
the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the
beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. A
dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered
round to see what they had taken - mackerel or jelly-fish - I
cared no longer to look with them. That sudden, wonderful
glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as
well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp
who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is
gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before
him - glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems,
more than he can gather up.
But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems,
though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the
greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a
rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and
higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and
freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air,
essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible
nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching
sky.
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