Chita: A Memory of Last Island | Page 6

sky. And yet there is a
tenderness of tint, a caress of color, in these Gulf-days which is not of
the Antilles,--a spirituality, as of eternal tropical spring. It must have
been to even such a sky that Xenophanes lifted up his eyes of old when
he vowed the Infinite Blue was God;--it was indeed under such a sky
that De Soto named the vastest and grandest of Southern havens
Espiritu Santo,--the Bay of the Holy Ghost. There is a something
unutterable in this bright Gulf-air that compels awe,--something vital,

something holy, something pantheistic: and reverentially the mind asks
itself if what the eye beholds is not the Pneuma indeed, the Infinite
Breath, the Divine Ghost, the great Blue Soul of the Unknown. All, all
is blue in the calm,--save the low land under your feet, which you
almost forget, since it seems only as a tiny green flake afloat in the
liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly, irresistibly, the
witchery of the Infinite grows upon you: out of Time and Space you
begin to dream with open eyes,--to drift into delicious oblivion of
facts,--to forget the past, the present, the substantial,--to comprehend
nothing but the existence of that infinite Blue Ghost as something into
which you would wish to melt utterly away forever....
And this day-magic of azure endures sometimes for months together.
Cloudlessly the dawn reddens up through a violet east:
there is no speck upon the blossoming of its Mystical Rose,--unless it
be the silhouette of some passing gull, whirling his sickle-wings against
the crimsoning. Ever, as the sun floats higher, the flood shifts its color.
Sometimes smooth and gray, yet flickering with the morning gold, it is
the vision of John,--the apocalyptic Sea of Glass mixed with
fire;--again, with the growing breeze, it takes that incredible purple tint
familiar mostly to painters of West Indian scenery;--once more, under
the blaze of noon, it changes to a waste of broken emerald. With
evening, the horizon assumes tints of inexpressible
sweetness,--pearl-lights, opaline colors of milk and fire; and in the west
are topaz-glowings and wondrous flushings as of nacre. Then, if the sea
sleeps, it dreams of all these,--faintly, weirdly,--shadowing them even
to the verge of heaven.
Beautiful, too, are those white phantasmagoria which, at the approach
of equinoctial days, mark the coming of the winds. Over the rim of the
sea a bright cloud gently pushes up its head. It rises; and others rise
with it, to right and left--slowly at first; then more swiftly. All are
brilliantly white and flocculent, like loose new cotton. Gradually they
mount in enormous line high above the Gulf, rolling and wreathing into
an arch that expands and advances,--bending from horizon to horizon.
A clear, cold breath accompanies its coming. Reaching the zenith, it

seems there to hang poised awhile,--a ghostly bridge arching the
empyrean,--upreaching its measureless span from either underside of
the world. Then the colossal phantom begins to turn, as on a pivot of
air,--always preserving its curvilinear symmetry, but moving its unseen
ends beyond and below the sky-circle. And at last it floats away
unbroken beyond the blue sweep of the world, with a wind following
after. Day after day, almost at the same hour, the white arc rises, wheels,
and passes ...
... Never a glimpse of rock on these low shores;--only long sloping
beaches and bars of smooth tawny sand. Sand and sea teem with
vitality;--over all the dunes there is a constant susurration, a blattering
and swarming of crustacea;--through all the sea there is a ceaseless play
of silver lightning,--flashing of myriad fish. Sometimes the shallows
are thickened with minute, transparent, crab-like organisms,--all
colorless as gelatine. There are days also when countless medusae drift
in--beautiful veined creatures that throb like hearts, with perpetual
systole and diastole of their diaphanous envelops: some, of translucent
azure or rose, seem in the flood the shadows or ghosts of huge
campanulate flowers;--others have the semblance of strange living
vegetables,--great milky tubers, just beginning to sprout. But woe to the
human skin grazed by those shadowy sproutings and spectral
stamens!--the touch of glowing iron is not more painful... Within an
hour or two after their appearance all these tremulous jellies vanish
mysteriously as they came.
Perhaps, if a bold swimmer, you may venture out alone a long
way--once! Not twice!--even in company. As the water deepens
beneath you, and you feel those ascending wave-currents of coldness
arising which bespeak profundity, you will also begin to feel
innumerable touches, as of groping fingers--touches of the bodies of
fish, innumerable fish, fleeing towards shore. The farther you advance,
the more thickly you will feel them come; and above you and around
you, to right and left, others will leap and fall so swiftly as to daze the
sight, like intercrossing fountain-jets of fluid