Lagoon

“ THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing. ”

“ I had never seen a more favorable place for a sportsman’s home. Besides the deep-sea fishing beyond the rock wall, it was easy to believe that the lagoon itself was the home of countless schools of such hard-fighting game-fish as loved such craggy seas. The lagoon was fretful and rough from the flowing tide at that moment, offering no inducements to a boatman, but I surmised at once that it would be still as a lake in the hours that the tide ebbed. The shore was a favorable place for the swift-winged shorebirds that all sportsmen love—plover and curlew and their fellows. ”

“ Slender leaves like little golden fish, fell from the bending willows into the lagoon, sinking slowly, mirrored for one lovely moment in the still water.
Mirrored, too, was the green boat, and Delight, fearfully dipping the oars. . . . There seemed to be two boats, two Delights, crossing the deep lagoon.
The sun, like a great red rose, lay at the water's edge, its rich light streaming like a banner from shore to shore. A little flock of gulls floating with folded wings, watched the passing of the boat, with turnings and archings of their downy necks. ”

“ Nothing here but a little brook flowing in. At the back of the island? Nothing here but a landlocked lagoon. Must we make the circuit of the whole shore before we find the way out? Stop a moment. What are those two taller clumps of bushes on the edge of this broad curving meadow—down there in the corner, do you see? Turn back, go close to the shore, swing around the nearer clump, and here we are in the smooth amber stream, slipping silently, furtively, down through the meadow, as if it would steal away for a merry jest and leave us going round and round the lake till nightfall. ”

“ Sometimes a low smudge of palms lay along the horizon; sometimes, with no land in sight, the Tara battled with the fierce uncharted currents of this maze of reefs; and there were days when a green glimmer in the sky told of the presence of some huge lagoon, hidden from our eyes by the curving slope of the world. ”

“ Here, sheltered more completely than opposite the break in the reef, the artu trees came in places right down to the water’s edge; the breadfruit trees cast the shadow of their great scalloped leaves upon the water; glades, thick with fern, wildernesses of the mammee apple, and bushes of the scarlet “wild cocoa-nut” all slipped by, as the dinghy, hugging the shore, crept up the lagoon. ”

“ The lagoon lies placid like a mirror. The slow sea breaks eternally on the outer reef. The white clouds sail over day by day. The seabirds come back to their haunts,—the fierce man-of-war birds, the gentle, soft-eyed tern. ”

“ The force of my leap carried me over and down, the descending waters seized me as the sluice in a sink might seize an insect, and slowly, steadily, as if by a giant’s hand, drew me into darkness.
I had been drawn into the subterranean outlet of the lagoon, the passageway of the waters of the outgoing tide. Life itself depended on how long that under-water channel was. I only knew that I was headed under the rock wall and toward the open sea. ”

“ I said to the teacher, “walk with me round the island. I would once more look upon the lagoon and sit with you a little while as we have sat many times before, under the great toa tree that grows upon the point on the weather side.”
And so we two passed out of the mission house, and hand in hand, like children, went into the quiet village and along the sandy path that wound through the vista of serried, grey-boled palms, till we came to the white, inner beach of the calm lagoon, which shone and glistened like burnished silver. On the beach were some canoes. ”

“ The white man came out of the hut in time to see the enormous conflagration of sunset put out by the swift and stealthy shadows that, rising like a black and impalpable vapour above the tree-tops, spread over the heaven, extinguishing the crimson glow of floating clouds and the red brilliance of departing daylight. In a few moments all the stars came out above the intense blackness of the earth and the great lagoon gleaming suddenly with reflected lights resembled an oval patch of night sky flung down into the hopeless and abysmal night of the wilderness. ”

“ After a spell of calm weather, when the breaching surf had ceased to cloud the waters of the lagoon, and the suspended particles of coral sand had settled to the bottom, Ruri offered to show me how to catch tenu—a fine fish, inhabiting the lagoon in ten to twenty fathoms of water—speckled like a trout on a ground of brown and gold, and reaching a weight of twenty pounds. ”

“ Thrashing its way between far-sweeping marshes and wooded sea islands, the boat would burst suddenly into lagoon after lagoon, that lay strewn along the coast, that blazed in the noon like great fire-opals held in silver mesh. ”

“ There was a lot of human nature lurking in the depths of the lagoon, comedy and tragedy.
An English rock-pool has its marvels. You can fancy the marvels of this vast rock-pool, nine miles round and varying from a third to half a mile broad, swarming with tropic life and flights of painted fishes; where the glittering albicore passed beneath the boat like a fire and a shadow; where the boat’s reflection lay as clear on the bottom as though the water were air; where the sea, pacified by the reef, told, like a little child, its dreams. ”

“ When we arrived at the head of the lagoon we crossed a narrow islet and found a great surf breaking on the windward coast. I can hardly explain the reason, but there is to my mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of these lagoon-islands. There is a simplicity in the barrier-like beach, the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa-nuts, the solid flat of dead coral-rock, strewed here and there with great loose fragments, and the line of furious breakers, all rounding away towards either hand. The ocean throwing its waters over the broad reef appears an invincible, all-powerful enemy ”

“ Over at the other side, sitting on the sand with the break of the reef which faced the east before you, scarcely would the east change colour before the sea-line would be on fire, the sky lit up into an illimitable void of blue, and the sunlight flooding into the lagoon, the ripples of light seeming to chase the ripples of water.
On this side it was different. The sky would be dark and full of stars, and the woods, great spaces of velvety shadow. Then through the leaves of the artu would come a sigh, and the leaves of the breadfruit would patter, and the sound of the reef become faint. ”

“ Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.
VII.—At the Lido. ”

“ Before her lay a great sweep of the palest blue wind-swept water, down to which came a broad green sward of park-like land set on either side with deep groves, and leading up and away to higher land, where, above the massive and motionless green of the great breadfruit trees, the palm trees swayed and fluttered their pale green feathers in the breeze. The pale colour of the water was due to the extreme shallowness of the lagoon just here. So shallow was it that one could see brown spaces indicating beds of dead and rotten coral, and splashes of darkest sapphire where the deep pools lay. ”

“ Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests.
The men poled in the shoaling water. The creek broadened, opening out into a wide sweep of a stagnant lagoon. The forests receded from the marshy bank, leaving a level strip of bright green, reedy grass to frame the reflected blueness of the sky. ”

“ At about the same hour, if the tide be low in the lagoon, you are likely to be bound yourself across the island for a bath, and may enter close at their heels alleys of the palm wood. Right in front, although the sun is not yet risen, the east is already lighted with preparatory fires, and the huge accumulations of the trade-wind cloud glow with and heliograph the coming day. The breeze is in your face; overhead in the tops of the palms, its playthings, it maintains a lively bustle; look where you will, above or below, there is no human presence, only the earth and shaken forest. ”

“ So he came back down the beach to the water’s edge, cast down his boots, cast off his coat, and plunged in. The lagoon was wide, but in his present state of mind he would have swum the Hellespont. His figure gone from the beach, the night resumed its majesty and aspect of meditation.
So lit was the lagoon by starshine that the head of the swimmer could be distinguished away out in the midst of circles of light; also, as the head neared the reef, a dark triangle that came shearing through the water past the palm tree at the pier. ”

“ We drove along the shore on a road of fine green turf, skirting the lovely calm lagoon, and passing by an endless succession of small wooden houses, each almost hidden in bowers of blossom and shady fruit-trees, with pleasant lawns, where merry children played, while their elders sat or lay on mats sewing, or twining wreaths, or rolling cigarettes—all suggesting lives of easy-going happiness without undue care ”

“ They are a vital part of her sea charm.
The live lagoon itself is of endless interest. It has quite a little population of its own. Boys and men, clothed only in a loose shirt, and with the glowing skin the sun and sea create, move to and fro over the shallow spaces fishing for sea-spoil, sometimes white against the purple arch of the stormy sky, sometimes like a pillar of rose in the setting sun; and their slow, unremitting labour, which means for them no more than an escape from starvation, makes one ashamed to think so much of beauty, unless we bind it up with the trouble of the world. ”

“ But to reach it we commonly row down the lake to a sheltered lagoon, separated from the main lake by a long island which is gradually forming itself like the coral isles, growing each year denser with alder thickets where the king-birds build;—there leave the boat among the lily-leaves, and take a lane which winds among the meadows and gives a fitting avenue for the pretty thing we seek. But it is not safe to vary many days from the twentieth of May, for the plant is not long in perfection, and is past its prime when the lower blossoms begin to wither on the stem. ”

“ This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, a salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening up by a narrow channel—on both banks of which rises the flourishing town of Cette—into the Mediterranean. For the greater part of its length, only a strip of sand and shingle interposes between the lake and the sea, and as the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment the surf of the open ocean rising beyond the barrier. ”

“ All Nature’s doings in the sky are also repeated with a tender fidelity in the mirror of the lagoon—morning light, noonday silver, purple thunder-cloud in the afternoon, sunset vapours, the moon and stars of night—and not only on the surface, but also, it seems, in an immeasurable depth. ”

“ It was a curious thing that there was no perceptible wind over the lagoon. Perhaps the reason was that we invariably associate wind with coolness, rather than any sort of a hushed movement of the air—and the impulse that brushed up on the veranda to us was as warm as a child’s breath on the face. There was simply no whisper of sound on shore or sea or forest. The curlews were stilled, the wild creatures were likely lying motionless, trying to escape the heat, the little rustlings and murmurings of stirring vegetation was gone from the gardens. ”

“ While round about the princess-like lagoon
Wears as her royal robe the star-spun sky.
Far by the windmill, the old ruin, ere
The smile of dawn shine with its rosy tinge,
The hosts of tyrant slayers mount from below
And kiss the earth war-nurtured and war-glad.
They raise again the ruin to a castle
With rifles singing back to victories;
And the lagoon is full of flashes swift,
Like a dark eye kindled with fiery wrath.
WHAT THE LAGOON SAYS
I have the sweetness of the lake and have
The bitterness of the great sea. But now,
Alas! my sweetness is a little drop ”

“ There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and might the next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the pretty island between itself and the river. Winter and summer the volume of water never varies, and the rate of discharge is always the same, and the water is never cold, though I have just said it is. It looks cold until the rocks warm it with their gemlike tints, like a bride's jewels gleaming through her veil. ”