Cove

“ The Ensign followed. Whirlit and Keener mounted the bird ponies, and waited for the word of command.
"To the cove. Go!" shouted Madam Breeze; and away the party went over orchard and meadow, over town, bridge and river. They stopped at the summit of a hill that stands at the mouth of the cove, whose brow has been worn by frosts, heats and storms of centuries, until it stands up a bald cliff. The naked rock below has a rough likeness to a human face, and the fringe of bushes underneath gives the idea of a vast beard. ”

“ On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock, formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their weird arms into the sea ”

“ A perfectly sheltered cove, with excellent holding-ground, is enclosed by steep forest-clad slopes, culminating to the north in a lofty conical hill easily recognized by seamen. The narrow fringe between the forest and the beach is covered with a luxuriant growth of ferns and shrubby plants, many of them covered in summer with brilliant flowers, blooming in a solitude rarely broken by the passage of man. ”

“ There, when the tide was coming in, water rushed over half submerged rocks to go booming against the granite wall, then to return murmuring and whispering of many things.
Pearl sat in the stern of her dory on this particular afternoon and recalled all the strange tales that had been woven about the cove.
At one time, so the story ran, it had been a smugglers’ cove. Here in the days of long ago, dark gray, low lying crafts came to anchor at dead of night to bring ashore cargoes of rich silks, tea, coffee and spices. ”

“ The pasture birds are waking up their preludes of evensong, and the sun across the cove to the west is glorifying all the quivering canopy of green leaves through which it shines with a luminous, diaphanous quality which makes magic all along that side of the cove. ”

“ Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day, when the water is perfectly calm and full of reflections, I paddle gently down the main stream, and, turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove, where I unexpectedly find myself surrounded by myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers, which seem to have the same purpose, or want of purpose, with myself. ”

“ Half a mile farther on, the shore line curved inward in a wide, deep cove, and in the middle of the crescent, raised there by one of those odd freaks of nature, was a jutting, rocky plateau rising raggedly from the smooth sweep of yellow sand. ”

“ He went down the path to the little cove. He watched the ripple of water advance and retreat. The stream of fresh water that ran through it was crystal clear and he bent down, made a cup with his hands and drank. He could see the pebbles, brown and red and green like jewels, and thin spires of green weed swaying to and fro. ”

“ When at last I stood upon the shore, the air and sea were all aglimmer in a rosy light, deepening to crimson in the zenith. Along the beach I saw a little cove, shelving and all ashine, where shallow waves washed with a mellow sound. Fine as dusted gold the shingle glowed, and the thin film of water rose, receded, crept up again a little higher, and again flowed back, with the low hiss of snowy foam and gilded bubbles breaking.
I stood a little while quiet, my eyes upon the water, the invitation of the ocean in my ears, vague and sweet as the murmur of a shell. ”

“ Emerging from the woods at a farm-house at the head of a cove, a foot-path leads to the promontory at its hither side. It is thrust a little out from the land, sheltering the cove while itself receiving the full onset of the sea. An intrusion of white rock in the seaward face is supposed by those of an imaginative turn to bear some resemblance to a schooner; and, in order to complete the similitude, two flag-staffs had been erected on the top of the cliff. ”

“ When she reached the point at which the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed to be repairing. ”

“ The evening caught us near to a forest, the trail, sandy and white, running close to a sort of cove formed in the trees, and here we camped, taking our saddles off, lighting a fire, and lying down to sleep just in the opening of the cove, our horses tied inside. All through the night people appeared to pass along the road. ”

“ Through the ancient forest, a mixed growth of cedar, water-ash, black poplar, and maple, with here and there a group of hemlocks on a knoll, the light drained down confusedly, a bewildering chaos of bright patches, lines, and reticulations amid breadths of blackness. On the half-overshadowed cove, which here jutted in from the lake, the mingling of light and darkness wrought an even more elusive mystery than in the wood. For the calm levels just breathed, as it were, with a fading remembrance of the wind which had blown till sundown over the open lake. ”

“ It is a miserable, dirty, damp hole, surrounded by high forest-clad hills, round which everlasting mists curl and obscure the sun, whose rays, at any chance moment when they do reach the steamy swamp on which it is built or the waters of the lead-coloured, land-locked cove that constitutes the harbour, immediately exhale the thick sickly moisture, in clouds of sluggish white vapours, smelling diabolically of decayed vegetables, and slime, and mud. ”

“ We conversed in shouts.
"We can surf the boat," yelled Thrackles, "but we can't land a load."
That was my opinion. We rowed slowly along, parallel to the shore, and just outside the line of breakers.
I don't know exactly how to tell you the manner in which we became aware of the cove. It was as nearly the instantaneous as can be imagined. One minute I looked ahead on a cliff as unbroken as the side of a cabin; the very next I peered down the length of a cove fifty fathoms long by about ten wide, at the end of which was a gravel beach. I cried out sharply to the men. ”

“ We rowed about a couple of miles and ran into a cozy cove where wood and water were close at hand. How beautiful and homelike it was! plushy moss for mattresses decked with red corner berries, noble spruce standing guard about us and spreading kindly protecting arms. A few ferns, aspidiums, polypodiums, with dewberry vines, coptis, pyrola, leafless huckleberry bushes, and ledum grow beneath the trees. We retired at eight o’clock, and just then Toyatte, who had been attentively studying the sky, presaged rain and another southeaster for the morrow. ”

“ You see the set of the tide far out in the lake, sliding, driving, crowding, hurrying in with smooth currents and swirling eddies, toward the corner of escape. By the rocky cove where the Island House peers out through the fir-trees, the current already has a perceptible slope. It begins to boil over hidden stones in the middle, and gurgles at projecting points of rock. A mile farther down there is an islet where the stream quickens, chafes, and breaks into a rapid. ”

“ At times the rain stops, and the great black clouds race desperately across the sky while the world outside our little cove is a raging mass of spume that becomes wind-torn and flies like huge snow flakes high up in the air. ”

“ After calling a halt for a sketch of Little Haven, we up sticks and away, pursuing a south-westerly course by a road that climbs high above the rock-bound coast. Far below us lies a picturesque cove, with a rude flight of steps, hewn from the rock, leading to a landing-place used by the fisher-folk. ”

“ I procured an old tub, with a short stump of a mast, which, being planted quite in the centre, gave the craft much the appearance of an inverted mushroom. I made for what I took to be, and what is, an island, lying long and low, some three or four miles, over against the town. I sailed for half an hour directly before the wind, and at last found myself aground on the shelving beach of a quiet little cove. Such a little cove! So bright, so still, so warm, so remote from the town, which lay off in the distance, white and semicircular! I leaped ashore, and dropped my anchor. ”

“ With the swift tide the boats shot around a headland, and here was a cove in the huge precipice, clothed with sere herbage and bushes and a few trees; steep, with the hint of a once-used path across it, but a little less perpendicular than the rest of the rock. No sentinel was stationed at this place.
The world was just beginning to come out of positive shadow into the indistinctness of dawn. Current and tide were so strong that the boats could not be steered directly to shore, but on the alluvial strip at the base of this cove they beached themselves with such success as they could. ”

“ Only from the sea could one guess its existence, so completely was it tucked away on three precipitous sides by the land, and screened by the thicket. Furthermore, the beach was the head of a narrow rock cove, a quarter of a mile long, up which pent way the sea roared and was subdued at the last to a gentle pulse of surf. Beyond the mouth many detached rocks, meeting the full force of the breakers, spouted foam and spray high in the air. The knees of these rocks, seen between the surges, were black with mussels. ”

“ One, apparently in a spirit of daring, would set out to cross our path—leaving his little cove, he would glide with the utmost rapidity over the river in front of us, leaving a silver line on the smooth surface of the stream, and after we had passed, glide back, bobbing up and down upon the waves in our wake. ”

“ We glided along quickly and pleasantly enough, past the first inlet, and the second, from our own Cove, scrutinizing all the banks, and rocks, and shady nooks, so familiar through many a wild exploring of ours; to reach the third we were obliged to stand out a considerable distance to sea, as the promontory bounding the White-Rock Cove on this side stretched far beyond the other rocky buttresses, making one of the most prominent land-marks in that part of the south coast. ”

“ They are mostly the wives and mothers of the boatmen, to whom appertaineth the conduct of the Cove, sailing and fishing, the letting out of craft, the exploiting, in short, of little Balmworth as a sea pleasure-garden.
It is a very quaint and pretty basin among the cliffs, is this Cove—something like Mother Carey's Peace-pool. It is just a mile in circumference; and the land's fond arms, not quite meeting round it, leave open a narrow water-way, through which pleasuring steamers can creep in in all but stormy weather. They do not trouble one much. ”

“ Then he shoved the dory out into the fog.
From the ledge of rock which bordered the cove, the half-starved man pulled the razor-backed mussels from the sea-grass and broke them open with his pocket-knife. For some time he ate rapidly. Then he ceased pulling at the shellfish and listened. A boat was coming to anchor in the cove. He could hear the soft slip of the chain through the chaulks. Perhaps they would land on the beach. Then he would be trapped on the ledge until they had gone.
Picking his way over the barnacled rocks he started for the beach. ”

“ When it became too dark to see the river for any distance ahead, the boys anchored in a little cove cut out of the foot of a mountain by the beating of waters, covering hundreds of years, and built a roaring fire in the coal stove. ”

“ Sometimes he jumps a half-inch high and skitters along the surface as a boy skips a stone; again he poises, lowers his body till it all but rests on the water, then raises it till he is high on four stilts, and all the time not even his toes are wet.
Entering the cove in mid-afternoon you might think the swooning heat had left it no life awake other than the water insects and the dragon-flies that race them in airship fashion above. Yet you have but to ground your canoe on a sedgy shallow, sit motionless, and wait. ”

“ I also overhauled every part of the Rocks all round the cove and without it examined every drain that I fell in with and although I saw at different parts of the under rocks and in holes perhaps enough water to keep a few men alive yet no quantity that could be much use to a ship's company. In East Cove there is a good anchorage all over it for ships of any size, and they may exactly choose what water to be in from 3 fathoms close in to ye beach to 14 in ye mouth of it. ”

“ As they came nearer to the neck of the bay they had the better sight of their haven and of its possibilities. The stream fell from a great height of the mountains to the sea, but there was a deep blue pool where it struck the shore, and about this wooded slopes flanked so steeply that the trees upon their heights hung over the bay; and many a cove, roofed with clinging creeper and sheltering bush, offered harbourage from the outer waters. ”