K
Joined: Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 1506
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K
(Editors note: A few posts were deleted by Bamboo Ben and myself to remove clutter from this thread. Thanks Ben.)
page 50 -- "Rarely do we sail about without enjoying the zest of the chance of getting something for nothing. Not yet the seaman's chest, brass bound, with its secret compartments full of 'fair rose-nobles and bright moidores,' been lighted upon; but who can say? Perhaps it has come ashore but now, after leagues of aimless wanderings, and awaits in some cosy cove the next beachcombing expedition. That from the ill-fated MERCHANT came hither years before my time, and was, in any case, pathetically unromantic.
"Peradventure there are many who deem this solitary existence dull? Why, it is brimful of interest and sensation. There are the tragedies of the bush to observe and elucidate; all cannot be foreseen and prevented, or even avenged. A bold falcon the other day swopped down upon a wood-swallow that was imitating the falcon's flight just above my head, and bore it bleeding to a tree-top, while I stood shocked at the audacity of the cannibal. A bullet dropped the murderous bird with its dead victim fast in the talons.
"There are comedies, too,(if) you have the wit to see them, and in these beachcombing expeditions expectation fairly effervesces.
"One lucky individual -- a mere amatuer -- casually picked up a black-lip mother-of-pearl shell on an island some little distance away. It contained a blue pearl, the price of which gave him such a start in life, that he is now the owner of ships. May not other tides cast up on the shores other oysters whose lives have been rendered miserable by the presence of pearls?
The Beachcomber wants no extensive establishment. His possessions need never be mortgaged. The cost of living is measurable by a standard adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of a little manual labor supplies the ommissions of and compensates for the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit -- if not the profession-- leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies luxuriously with time, free from all the restrictions of streets, every precious moment his very own; afloat in these calm and shallow waters there is a never-ending panaroma of entertainment. Coral Gardens -- gardens of the sea nymphs, wherein fancy feigns cool, shy, chaste faces and pliant forms half-reveled among gently swaying robes; a company of porpoise, a herd of dugong (editor's note: an Australian Manatee); turtle, queer and familiar fish, occassionally the spouting of a great whale, and always the company of swift and graceful birds. Sometimes the whole expansive ocean is as calm as it can only be in the tropics and bordered by the Barrier Reef-- a shield of shimmering silver from which the islands stand out as turquoise bosses. Again, it is of cobalt blue, or of grey-blue -- the reflection of a sky pallid and tremulous with excess of life."
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