THE OCEAN




CHAPTER I


A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean. The newly
fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp. The
northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the
mainland, bringing in its wake a sharply fragrant mixture of brine,
of boundless space, of undisturbed, free and mysterious distances.

In the sky, where the sun is setting, a noiseless destruction of an
unknown city, of an unknown land, is taking place; structures,
magnificent palaces with towers, are crumbling; mountains are
silently splitting asunder and, bending slowly, are tumbling down.
But no cry, no moan, no crash of the fall reaches the earth--the
monstrous play of shadows is noiseless; and the great surface of the
ocean, as though ready for something, as though waiting for
something, reflecting it faintly, listens to it in silence.

Silence reigns also in the fishermen's settlement. The fishermen
have gone fishing; the children are sleeping and only the restless