It was at the Gate of Baidari in the Crimea on the shortest day of
the year that I saw the most wonderful sunset I have ever known, and
entered most completely into the spirit of the dark, quiet night.
It was another vision of the sea, a presentment of the sea's question
in a new light.
A mild December afternoon. I had been some days wandering across
pleasant tree-brown valleys and immense hollows mountain-walled. In
the winter silence there was no murmur of the ocean, not even was
there saltness in the air. I was out of the sight of the sea and had
been so for several days. But this afternoon I climbed by a long road
where were many berberry bushes vermilion with their berries, up to
the pass over the hills, and there all at once by surprise, without
the least expecting it, at a turn of the road I had a revelation of
the whole sea.
It was a ravishment of the eyes, a scene on which one looks, at which
one stares. The road came suddenly to a precipice, and sheer down, two
thousand feet below, the waves foamed forward on the rocks, and from
the foam to the remote horizon lay the mysterious sleeping sea--no,
not sleeping, but rather causing all else to sleep in its presence,
for it was full of serpent lines all moving toward the shore. The
whole wild mountainous Crimean shore sat before the sea and dreamed.
And I realised slowly all that was in the evening. Below me lay the
white tortuous road leading downward to the shore in coils, and
clothing the road, the many woods, all hoary white because the sharp
sea-breeze had breathed on them. Evening had long since settled on the
road and on the wintry trees; it lay also about the grey temple which
the Russians have put up on one of the platforms of the lower cliffs.
The church looked so compact and small down below me that it seemed
one could have held it in the palm of the hand. It was sunset, but the
sky was full of blue-grey colour. The whole South caught a radiance
from the hidden West and the sea was grey.
In a moment it is noticeable that the south is becoming rosier. The
sea is now alight from the increase of sunset hues. In the shadow the
lines of the sea are a sequence of wavings like the smoke of the snow
blown over the steppes. In the hurrying clouds a great space clears,
and along the south-west runs a great rosy fleece of sunset. It is
rapidly darkening. The sea in the western corner is crimson, but all
the vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seen
from a balloon--pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where clouds
and sky mingle, one sees fantastically as it were the sides of giant,
shadowy fish.
The motor-coach, with its passengers from Sebastopol to Yalta, comes
rushing and grumbling up behind me and stops five minutes, this being
its half-way point. The passengers adjourn into the inn to drink
vodka: "Remember, gentlemen, five minutes only," says the chauffeur.
"God help any one who gets left behind at Baidari...." Four minutes
later there is a stamping of fat men in heavy overcoats round the
brightly varnished 'bus. "Are we going?" says a little man to the
refreshed but purple-faced chauffeur. "Yes!" "That's good. I've had
enough of this." The guard winds his horn, and after a preliminary
squirm of the plump tyres on the soft road, the vehicle and its
company goes tumbling down the road as if it were descending into a
pit.
And the sunset! It develops with every instant. The lines on the sea
seem to move more quickly, and the spaces between them to be larger.
The west is full of storm. A closing cloud comes up out of the west:
the western sea is utterly hopeless, the moving south inexorable.
There is terror in the west.
Evening is more below me than above me. Night is coming to me over the
dark woods. The foam on the rocks below is like a milk-white robe.
As I walk the first miles downhill I begin to hear the sound of the
waves. The sea is beginning to roar, and the wind rushing up to me
tells me that the lines of the sea are its stormy waves ridden forward
to the shore by a gale.
I stood on the platform where the many-domed temple was built, and
watched the gathering night. Unnumbered trees lay beneath me, but it
was so dusk I hardly knew them to be trees. The gigantic black cliff
that shuts off the west stood blank into the heaven like a great door:
to the east lay the ghostly fading coast-line of Aloopka. Among the
black clouds overhead danced out happy fires, and, answering their
brightness, windows lighted up in cottages far below, and lanterns
gleamed on a little steamer just puffing over the horizon.
There came the pure December evening with frost and Christmas bells,
and happy hearths somewhere in the background. The one star in the sky
was a beckoning one: my heart yearned.
I dipped down upon the road, and in a few minutes was looking at the
temple from below, seeing it entirely silhouetted against the sky. It
was now indeed held up in a giant's palm and looked at.
Far out at sea now lay a silver strand; the lines of the waves were
all curves and heavily laden with shadows--they were, indeed, waves.
Far above me the cliffs that I had left were mist-hidden, and in the
midst shone a strange light from the last glow of sunset in the unseen
west.
Night. At a word the sea became lineless and shapeless. The sunset sky
was green-blue, and black strips of cloud lay athwart it. Looking up
to the crags above me, I missed the church: it was in heaven or in the
clouds. A great wind blew, and ceased, and came no more--the one gust
that I felt of a whole day's storm on the coast. Night chose to be
calm, and though all the waves called in chorus upon the rocks, there
was a silence and a peace within the evening that is beyond all words.
I walked with the night. I walked to find an inn, and yet cared not
that the way was far and that men dwelt not in these parts. For
something had entered into me from Nature, and I had lived an extra
life after the day was done. It was not one person alone that, pack on
back, walked that dark and quiet Crimean road. And the new spirit
that was with me whispered promises and lingered over secrets
half-revealed. I came to know that I should really enter into it, and
be one with it, that I should be part of a description of night and
part of night itself.
At one of the many turnings of the road I came upon five dreamy
waggons, and Tartar waggoners walked by the horses, for their loads
were heavy. I made friends with the third waggoner, and he asked me
to carry his whip and take his place whilst he talked with one of his
mates. For eight miles I walked by the side of the plodding horses,
and encouraged them or whipped them, coaxed or scolded them, as they
slowly dragged their lumberous merchandise along the dark and heavy
roads.
I almost fell asleep, but at an inn half-way I drank tea with the
waggoners "cheek by jowl and knee by knee," and they saw me as one of
themselves.
Once more on the road--we went nearly all the way to Aloopka. The
Tartars sang songs, the beasts of burden toiled; on one side the
cliffs overwhelmed us, and on the other lay the dark sea on which the
stars were peeping. The still night held us all.