Daniel Pidgeon

“ Lights glitter everywhere, from the planet-like harbour signals, to the lamps of the promenade, with their long quivering reflections. Once more at home we recall the pleasures of our trip, and filled with admiration of the mighty results which man’s skill and perseverance can attain, we determine soon to look a little into the history and structure of that grander breakwater of nature’s building,—the pebble-beach. ”

“ If we wait a few minutes while the piece is adjusted and fastened firmly down, we shall see the revolving cutting tools of the machine, like a ring of sharp, shining, steel teeth, tearing away at the rough iron, and leaving a perfectly true, smooth surface behind their track. As the machine cannot plane more than one superficial foot per hour, we will leave the remorseless teeth eating into the solid metal, growling over their meal like some hungry angry beast, and turn to another casting which, having been through this operation, is now laid down to undergo further tortures. ”

“ Bobbing up and down with every ripple, a semicircle of cork-floats tells us the position of the net; the busy crew haul upon the lines, and every minute the dancing curve lessens in diameter. Women have come upon the scene, and creels are countless. Flash! A single white belly glistens in the moonlight; the corks come closer and closer; fish after fish shows his glittering sides above the water, and in a minute more the red pebbles gleam with their living load; thousands upon thousands of jumping and writhing mackarel are lying on the bank, while men and women rush, creel in hand, upon them. ”

“ The grass-covered rocks under our feet run westward, dipping as they go, till at some three miles’ distance they meet the long low line of the pebble-beach, over and beyond which we plainly see the glimmer of the distant channel; following the course of this most wonderful bank, as it stretches in a south-easterly direction, the eye rests at last on the rocky island of Portland, and reaching its farthermost points, falls directly on the breakwater. ”

“ At times there come fierce gales with their attendant heavy ground-swells. As the quick waves strike the beach the hollow roar of rolling pebbles marks each receding column of water; masses of shingle are scoured away while the hurricane lasts: one night of this fierce work will carry back into deep water from two to three and four millions of tons of stone, yet these, on the return of calmer weather, will all be thrown in again in the course of very few days. ”

“ The mention of ground-swells, however, reminds us of times when storm instead of sunshine has tempted us with its grandeur, and we have crouched here behind the fishermen’s semicircular rough stone curtains erected for protection, holding fast on while the hard rain and blinding spray struck the face, striving to see, through the mist-darkened shadows of a November afternoon, the mad sea wrestling with the cruel wind. ”

“ The Atlantic cable, whose very existence is referable to the facts made known by deep-sea sounding is, as yet, a failure; still, let all observers work and wait; hasty men, with a contempt for scraps of information and thimblefuls of knowledge, will meanwhile do well to remember Franklin’s question, “What is the use of a new-born babe?” None can solve that unanswerable riddle, yet there is no one of us who doubts the possibilities that may be hidden in that germ of life. ”

“ The sandstone crumbling year by year, attacked by gales and washed by water, drops on the shore an inexhaustible supply of these red-brown stones whose travels begin only in the fall from the parent rock, and end upon the strange isthmus thirty miles away. Matter, like man, plays many a part before it leaves the world’s stage. ”

“ Still the bait swims on unmolested, when we become aware of a curious kind of excitement among them; growing and spreading, in an instant it has become a panic, and the gliding shoal darts wildly through and even out of the water, as a hundred glittering streaks of green and silver flash among them out of the deep sea. ”

“ All day long the shining teeth gnaw and growl savagely over their prey; all day the active drills eat their way into the metal, like some new kind of “teredo;” and ever there comes the finished work, true, from the machines. But we must leave the fitting-shop, though there is a magnetism about its operations which no one who visits it for the first time escapes. ”

“ It may be worth our while to get near a crew, and rest upon the clean pebbles while we watch them. How listlessly the men loll about in various attitudes of repose. A few oldsters—lookers-on like ourselves—sit apart in knots calmly chatting, while the lads, true to their instincts, are skylarking about the beach. Each of these groups in their way forms a strong contrast with the keen-eyed look-out, who stands alone high up upon the shingle, with quick eyes fixed seaward. ”

“ The most matter-of-fact man has, when lounging by the shore, been sometimes attacked with the strong desire, if not to people the subaqueous realms of lake or sea with imaginary beings, at least to penetrate the shrouding veil of water, and to discover what are the beauties and what the forms he feels lie hidden beneath the wave. ”

“ From Portland to the mainland there runs at a few feet above the low-tide level a bank of stiff clay covered up deep in pebbles now and hidden from all observation less searching than that of the boring-bar; by this the travelling stones were first checked and accumulation begun. Through how many circling years the winds and waves have been about their task we know not, yet it is not probable that this action is a very slow and lingering one; the sea, which can patiently gnaw century after century at some refractory rock which falls at length, can prove itself a quick worker on occasion. ”

“ At times like these the Chesil Bank is not a place of the pleasantest associations; the long ridge of stone breasting the channel rollers becomes with every storm a strong protection or a deadly danger to the seaman’s life, just as it happens upon which side of it his ship lies. A terrible place for stranded vessels is this red beach when the south-wester is fairly loosed; at such times the waves which fall in here are terrific,—one breaker alone falling full upon a vessel of large size, which had driven on the bank, has been known completely to destroy and break it to pieces. ”

“ The sun is going down into a still sea, the breeze has fallen, and the quiet of evening is creeping over the bay; we take a long look at the Great Eastern, and her last departing batch of visitors, and with a glance at the black ships-of-war, the stately Edgar and Blenheim, and the beautiful frigates. ”

“ Turning our steps to the engine and fitting-shops, we come suddenly into the presence of a steam-hammer in full work, standing in the centre of a large building crowded with machinery, and at this moment driving the star-like sparks of burning metal, meteor-like, about the place. ”

“ Turning from this wide and general view of our subject, we set ourselves to look a little more closely at these new comers from a mysterious home, not without an idea that some among them may at least turn out to be hitherto unknown forms of life. One glance of the practised microscopist, however, detects a well-known character in each; these dwellers in the deep sea are no new creations, we recognise them all as old familiar friends. ”

“ If an island, to be truly worthy of its name, must necessarily be completely surrounded by water, then is Portland a peninsula; if, however, it is sufficient for the attainment of insular dignity that a patch of cliff, some seven miles long by three miles wide, should be detached from the mainland by an intervening space of five miles of blue water bridged only by a thin streak of beach, then do we set both geographer and lexicographer at nought, and dub their technical peninsula a practical island. ”

“ Walking, as it were, by faith in science and skill, the locomotive steams along the platform, while the wind is howling through the timber work, and the sea is breaking vainly on the piling. Two thousand tons of material a day is thus cast into the water; for nearly ten years this has been going on, and the sea is not yet wholly conquered. The construction of the inner and shorter breakwater, being, as we have said, not only a sea wall, but a landing-stage as well, claims some attention. This part of the work is all but completed, and presents a magnificent specimen of masonry. ”

“ For an instant all sight of them is lost in an ascending column of white water, till as this slowly sinks you again catch sight of the “Prince” quiet amid the din, and then there comes another crash and another column of spray shot high into the air—but this time we are not alarmed; the trucks we discover are only discharging their stone. By a simple mechanical contrivance the waggon drops its whole load bodily into the sea, and it was to this falling mass of rubble, some eight or ten tons in all, that the commotion was due. ”

“ When the dark times of sea life come, when the moonlit water of this placid evening has become the deadly foe with which to struggle for the dear life, then has many a shipwrecked sailor had cause to thank God for the bold and hardy life and training which have helped to make the beach fishermen ever ready to brave danger, or, if need be, to face death when the need arises. ”

“ Perhaps in all matters relating to decoration, there is nothing so completely without law as public taste, we will not, therefore, stay to examine into the merit or demerit of work on which it is pretty certain every man will have his own opinion; but in criticising ornamental iron-work, the practical man cannot forget that a faulty moulding may be the result of difficulties in casting, as he knows that a really successful imitation of the Gothic style, so peculiarly adapted to stone, is practically almost impossible in cast iron. ”

“ If we imagine a delicate discoid spiral shell of elegant form, marked with curved and diverging grooves, and inhabited by a tiny piece of clear jelly without organs, but capable of projecting the substance of its body (called “sarcode”) in the finest possible filaments through perforations in the surface of its shell, this first principal representative of the deep sea soundings is before us. In our prepared and mounted specimen it is the shell alone which we see; the delicate tenant has of course long since perished, and its beautiful envelope alone is left ”

“ Surrounded on all sides by whirling pulleys and flying-straps, we seem to be imprisoned in a whizzing world, where nothing stable satisfies the senses; our eyes seeking vainly for some spot endowed with the blessing of stillness, and our heads in a short time feeling as if about to catch the infection of motion and to take to whirling on their own account; so we go out again just as the modern steam Thor comes down with another thundering blow on a new mass of metal, and make our retreat amid a shower of blazing sparks. ”

“ Myriads of the little fish cover the water; thicker and thicker they glide past. Our little friend grows madder and madder, and flings out his barbarous line farther into the blue water, in the vain hope of taking some idiotic mackerel fonder of pork than safety. ”

“ For ourselves we believe the first. True, life lessens and organisations grow few and low in very deep water; but so abundant is it everywhere, that we find it less difficult to believe these delicate creatures have died and made no sign in the long passage from their dark home to the stage of the microscope, than that there should be one absolutely life-forsaken spot within the limits of our world; the singular uniformity of the deposits also forbids the idea that they were laid down by drifts and currents from distant sources ”

“ Some men there are, indeed, in whom this wish has grown to be a passion. It is not long since two widely-known and enthusiastic naturalists, possessed with this strong desire to know, prepared the necessary apparatus, and at some risk of life invaded the sea-god’s dominions. Thence they have sent up to us an eye-witness’ report of submarine manners and customs, and told us how the world goes on at the fifty-fathom line. Many a busy dredge, too, has been scraping for years past at the sea-floor, wherever it can be reached, bringing ever new facts before quick eyes and thoughtful brains ”

“ No honest work was ever done, no careful effort ever made to get at one of Nature’s smallest secrets without some useful results following in due time. And so we prize our Atlantic soundings, not doubting in the least that patience, continued observation, and experiment will yet bring to our knowledge hidden facts, new laws, and undreamed-of wisdom out of the depths. ”

“ Either we, or the stones, seem to have degenerated since Shakespeare's time, for they, now-a-days, preach sermons, but to very few listeners—and are not often occasions for sentiment—but the passing away of old Westminster bridge, associated as it is with some of England’s most classic interests, may well suggest memories of noble men and noble deeds, now buried in the dead past. ”

“ These Diatoms and Polycystinæ, humblest forms of vitality, do yet seem, in those wonderful peculiarities of their coverings (which, until we had become acquainted with these lower organisms, were ever considered as exclusively typical of infinitely higher races of animals) , to stretch out an almost prophetic finger, pointing from the sunless sea-floor, where the first faint glimmerings of the flame of life flickers through the darkness, to the coming time (distant, it may be, unnumbered ages) when a more perfected creation shall enter on the scene slowly preparing for its advent. ”