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THE WAVES
The
sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky,
except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles
in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon
dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with
thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface,
following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.As
they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a
thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then
drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes
unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as
if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass
green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there
had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had
raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across
the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and
the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green
surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the
smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the
burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which
lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it
to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became
transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes
were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it
higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of
fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed
gold.The
light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf
transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a
pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the
house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a
blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The
blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The
birds sang their blank melody outside.'I
see a ring,' said Bernard, 'hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in
a loop of light.''I
see a slab of pale yellow,' said Susan, 'spreading away until it
meets a purple stripe.''I
hear a sound,' said Rhoda, 'cheep, chirp; cheep chirp; going up and
down.''I
see a globe,' said Neville, 'hanging down in a drop against the
enormous flanks of some hill.'
