i was strolling one still evening along a lonely new zealand shore, when i made a grim discovery that has often set me thinking. i had been walking along the wet and crinkled sands, the tide being out, and had amused myself with the shells and the seaweed that had been left lying about by the receding waters. there is always a peculiar charm about such a stroll. it holds such infinite possibilities. one seems to be exploiting the surprise-packet of the universe. jane barlow, in her bogland studies, makes one of her characters say:
what use is one’s life widout chances? ye’ve always a chance wid the tide;
for ye never can tell what ’twill take in its head to strew round on the shore;
maybe driftwood, or grand bits of boards that come handy for splicing an oar,
or a crab skytin’ back o’er the shine o’ the wet; sure, whatever ye’ve found,
it’s a sort of diversion them whiles when ye’ve starvin’ and strelin’ around.
absorbed in so delightful an occupation the passage of time escaped my attention, until suddenly 37i noticed that twilight was rapidly falling, and i thought of my return. before retracing my steps, however, i sat down for a moment’s rest among the sand-dunes. the possibility of making a discovery among those arid mounds did not occur to me. but, as i sat absent-mindedly poking the soft sand with my stick, i suddenly struck something hard. i proceeded to dig it out, and found a couple of human skulls. they adorn the top shelf of my book-case before me at this moment. they always look down upon me as i write. i often catch myself leaning back in my chair, staring up at them, and trying to read their secret. who were they, i wonder, these two bony companions of mine? two maoris finishing, among the lonely dunes, their last fierce fatal feud? two travellers, hopelessly lost, who threw themselves down here to die? a couple of sailors, whose ship had struck the cruel reefs out yonder, and whose bodies were tossed up here by the pitiless waves? a pair of lovers trapped by the treacherous tide? i cannot tell. what a tantalizing mystery they seem to hold, as they grin down at me from this high shelf of mine! it is part of the ghostly sense of mystery that always haunts the sea and its tragedies. on the land, when disaster occurs, all the wreckage is left to tell its own tale; but on the ocean fate instantly obliterates all her tracks. the magnificent vessel 38lurches over, plunges with a roar into the deep, and the waves close over the frightful ruin. compared with the silence of the sea, the sphinx is voluble. the deep, dark, icy ocean-bed guards its secrets, and guards them well.
sometimes, however, it is more easy to read the riddle. here in tasmania, within easy reach of this quiet study of mine, there is a battle-field that i love to visit. it extends for miles and miles, and the whole place is strewn with the wreckage that tells of the titanic conflict. i do not mean that the place is littered with dead men’s bones. it was a far finer and a far fiercer fight than men could have waged, and it lasted longer than any war recorded in the annals of history. it is the battle-field on which the land fought the sea. it is a rocky and precipitous coast. sometimes i like to walk along the top of the cliff, and look down upon the pile of massive boulders that lie tumbled in picturesque and bewildering confusion about the beach below. or, at low tide, i like to make my way among those monstrous piles of broken rock that lie, higgledy-piggledy, all along the shore. what a fight it was, day and night, summer and winter, year in and year out, age after age! occasionally the attack slackened down, and the rippling waters merely lapped softly against the rocks. but there was no real truce. the sea was only 39gathering up its forces in secret for the majestic assault that was to come. then the great breakers came rushing in, like regiments of cavalry in full career, and each huge wave hurled itself upon the crags with such fury that the spray dashed up sky high.
it was a titanic struggle, and the waters won. that is the extraordinary thing—the waters won. the water seems so soft, so yielding, so fluid, and the rocks seem so impregnable, so adamantine, so immutable. yet the waters always win. the land makes no impression on the sea; but the sea grinds the land to powder. i know that the sea is often spoken of as the natural emblem of all that is fickle and changeful; but it is a pure illusion. there are, of course superficial variations of tone and tint and temper; but, as compared with the kaleidoscopic changes that overtake the land, the ocean is eternally and everywhere the same. it, and not the rocks, is the symbol of immutability. ‘look at the sea!’ exclaims max pemberton, in red morn. ‘how i love it! i like to think that those great rolling waves will go leaping by a thousand years from now. there is never any change about the sea. you never come back to it and say, “how it’s changed!” or “who’s been building here?” or “where’s the old place i loved?” no; it is always the same. i suppose if one stood here 40for a million years the sea would not be different. you’re quite sure of it, and it never disappoints you.’ the land, on the contrary, is for ever changing. man is always working his transformations, and nature is toiling to the same end.
‘when the romans came to england,’ says frank buckland, the naturalist, ‘julius caesar probably looked upon an outline of cliff very different from that which holds our gaze to-day. first there comes a sun-crack along the edge of the cliff; the rain-water gets into the crack; then comes the frost. the rain-water in freezing expands, and by degrees wedges off a great slice of chalk cliff; down this tumbles into the water; and neptune sets his great waves to work to tidy up the mess.’ no man can know the veriest rudiments of geology without recognizing that it is the land, and not the sea, that is constantly changing. we may visit some historic battle-field to-day, and, finding it a network of bustling streets and crowded alleys, may hopelessly fail to repeople the scene with the battalions that wheeled and charged, wavered and rallied, there in the brave days of old. but when, from the deck of a steamer, i surveyed the blue and tossing waters off cape trafalgar, i knew that i was gazing upon the scene just as it presented itself to the eye of nelson on the day of his immortal victory and glorious death more than a century ago.
41now, beneath this triumph of the ocean—the triumph that leaves the land in fragments whilst the sea itself sustains no injury—there lies a deeper significance than at first appears. job saw it. no elusive secret, lurking in the universe around him, escaped his restless eye. ‘the waters wear the stones!’ he cried, and it was a shout of victory that rose from his heart when he said it. ‘the waters wear the stones,’ he exclaimed, ‘and thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth.’ it is the death-knell of the material. it is the triumph of the eternal. a little child looks upon the great granite cliffs, and it seems impossible that the lapping waves can ever pound them to pieces. but they do. and in the same way, job says, man seems so impregnable, and the world so mighty, that it appears a thing incredible that god can finally prevail. but he shall. the quiet waters conquer the frowning cliffs at length. the walls of jericho fall down. this is the victory that overcometh the world.
and so here on this battle-field where the land and the sea fought for mastery, i find job sitting, and he interprets for me the paean that the waves are singing. it is the laughter of their triumph. ‘the waters wear away the stones.’ that was the heartening message that gave to spain one of her very greatest teachers. st. isidore of seville was 42only a boy at the time. he found his lessons hard to learn. study was a drudgery, and he was tempted to give up. the huge obstacles against which he, like the waves at the base of the cliff, was beating out his life seemed adamantine. so he ran away from school. but in the heat of the day he sat down to rest beside a little spring that trickled over a rock. he noticed that the water fell in drops, and only one drop at a time; yet those drops had worn away a large stone. it reminded him of the tasks he had forsaken, and he returned to his desk. diligent application overcame his dullness, and made him one of the first scholars of his time. he never forgot the drops of water, dripping, dripping, dripping on the rock that they were conquering. ‘those drops of water,’ says his biographer, ‘gave to spain a brilliant historian, and to the church a famous doctor.’
it is always the gentle things of life that conquer us. ‘the moving waters’—to quote keats’ beautiful phrase—
the moving waters at their priest-like task
of pure ablution round earth’s human shores’
wear down the towering cliffs along the coast. it is aesop’s fable of the north wind and the sun over again. the north wind, with its violence and bluster, only makes the traveller button his 43coat the tighter. it is the genial warmth of the sun that makes him take it off. it is always by gentleness that the adamantine world is mastered. that is one of life’s most lovely secrets. we are not ruled as much as we think by parliaments and commandments and enactments. the proportion of our lives that is governed by such things is very small. but the proportion that is dominated by gentler and more winsome forces is very great. the voices that sway us with a regal authority are soft and tender voices, the voices of those whose genial goodness compels us to love them. the imperial tones to which we capitulate unconditionally are very rarely stern official tones. who does not remember how, in the rosary, the hon. jane champion asks garth dalmain why he does not marry? and garth tells her of old margery, his childhood’s friend and nurse, now his housekeeper and general mender and tender—old margery, with her black satin apron, lawn kerchief, and lavender ribbons. ‘no doubt, miss champion, it will seem absurd to you that i should sit here on the duchess’s lawn and confess that i have been held back from proposing marriage to the women i most admired because of what would have been my old nurse’s opinion of them.’ yet so it invariably is. our servants are often our masters. life’s loftiest authorities never derive their sanctions 44from rank, office, or station. the soul has enthronements and coronations of its own. a little child often leads it. a carpenter becomes its king. out of nazareth comes the conqueror of the world. the pure and cleansing waters wear down the giant crags at the last.
but with purity and gentleness must go patience. the lapping waters do not reduce the rocky strata at a blow. it is always by means of patience that the finest conquests are won. who that has read jack london’s call of the wild will ever forget the great fight at the end of the book between buck, the dog hero, and the huge bull-moose? ‘three hundredweight more than half a ton he weighed, the old bull; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees!’ how was it done? ‘there is a patience in the wild,’ jack london says, ‘a patience dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself’; and it was by means of this patience that buck brought down his stately antlered prey. ‘night and day, buck never left him, never gave him a moment’s rest, never permitted him to browse on the leaves of the trees or the shoots of the young birch or willow. nor did he give the old bull one single opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender, trickling streams they crossed.’ for four 45days buck hung pitilessly at the huge beast’s heels, and at the end of the fourth day he pulled the bull-moose down. buck looked so little, but he wore the monarch out. the waters seem so feeble, but they beat the rocks to powder. it is thus that the foolish things of this world always confound the wise; the weak things conquer the mighty; and the things that are not bring to naught the things that are.
