Suddenly I stopped overcome and almost paralyzed by fear, for something
took shape before me, something dark and surging sprang up from all
sides at the same time and it seemed to stretch out endlessly. It was
something so vast and full of motion that I was seized with a deadly
vertigo--it was the sea of my imagining! Without a moment's hesitation,
without asking how this knowledge had been wrought, without astonishment
even, I recognized it and I trembled with a great emotion. It was
so dark a green as to be almost black; to me it seemed unstable,
perfidious, all ingulfing, always turbulent, and of a sinister, menacing
aspect. Above it, in harmony with it, stretched the gray and lowering
sky.

And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I
perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow
light showed through this cleft.

Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus quickly? Perhaps I
had, but without being conscious of it, for when I was about five or
six months old I had been brought to the Island by my great aunt, my
grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it had played so great a part
in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was born with a nascent conception
of it and its immensity.

We communed together a moment, one with the other--I was deeply
fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous
presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation,
in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,--and the emotion
that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of
fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the