CHAPTER IV.
I will now endeavor to explain the impression that the sea made upon
me at our first brief and melancholy encounter, which took place at
twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the Island.
Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see it, it had so
remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it was engraven
upon my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder run through me
when my spirit broods upon the recollection.
We had but newly arrived at this village near St. Ongeoise where my
parents had rented a fisherman's house for the bathing season. I knew
that we had come here for something called the sea, but I had had no
glimpse of it (a line of dunes hid it from me because of my short
stature), and I was extremely impatient to become acquainted with it;
therefore after dinner, as night was falling, I went alone to seek
this mysterious thing.
The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had experienced, and
from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the path led, there came
a faint but majestic noise. Everything affrighted me, the unfamiliar
way, the twilight falling from the overcast sky, and the loneliness of
this part of the village. But inspired by one of those great and
sudden resolutions, that come sometimes to the most timid, I went
forward with a firm step.
Suddenly I stopped overcome and almost paralyzed by fear, for
something took shape before me, something dark and surging sprang up
from all sides at the same time and it seemed to stretch out
endlessly. It was something so vast and full of motion that I was
seized with a deadly vertigo--it was the sea of my imagining! Without
a moment's hesitation, without asking how this knowledge had been
wrought, without astonishment even, I recognized it and I trembled
with a great emotion. It was so dark a green as to be almost black; to
me it seemed unstable, perfidious, all ingulfing, always turbulent,
and of a sinister, menacing aspect. Above it, in harmony with it,
stretched the gray and lowering sky.
And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I
perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow
light showed through this cleft.
Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus quickly? Perhaps I
had, but without being conscious of it, for when I was about five or
six months old I had been brought to the Island by my great aunt, my
grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it had played so great a part
in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was born with a nascent conception
of it and its immensity.
We communed together a moment, one with the other--I was deeply
fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous
presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation,
in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,--and the
emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only
one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to
feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast
mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I
was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her
and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might
console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that
surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast
and so deep.
