Surely a sense of freedom, inspired by a life on the ocean, and
fostered by the very hardships and dangers which that life
entails.

Thus cumulative is the evidence that the present, for all its
materialism, inherits the essence of the ancient mysticism; or
rather, it is open to the same impulses and intuitions, however
changed and changing the forms they may assume. On the one
hand, the infinite complexity of man's developing soul-life; on
the other, the limitless range of the moods and aspects of the
ocean: the two are spiritually linked by ultimate community of
nature: deep calls to deep: the response is living and eternal.



CHAPTER XXIII

WAVES

The most familiar appeal of the Ocean is that of the wave which
speeds over its surface or breaks upon its shores. Poets have
found here an inexhaustible theme. Painters have here expended
their utmost skill. Whether it is the tiny ripple that dies along
the curving sands, or the merry, rustling, crested surf that
hurries on to wanton in the rocky pools, or the storm billow that
rushes wildly against an iron-bound coast to spurt aloft its
sheets of spray or to hurl its threatening mass on the trembling
strand--in each and every form the wave is a moving miracle.
Through every change of contour and interplay of curves, its
lines are ever of inimitable grace. Its gradations of colour, its