At Dzhugba the sea was quiet as a little lake; at Dagomise it was
many-crested and thundering in the majesty of storm. At Gudaout the
sun rose over it as it might have done on the first morning of the
world.
Every dawning I bathed, and each bathing was as a new baptism. And in
multifarious places it was given to me to bathe; at Dzhugba, where the
sun shone fiercely on green water and the dark seaweed washed to and
fro on the rocks; at Olginka, the quietest little bay imaginable,
where the sea was so clear that one could count the stones below it,
the rippling water so crystalline that it tempted one to stoop down
and drink--a dainty spot--even the stones, on long curves of the
shore, seemed to have been nicely arranged by the sea the night
before, and far as I swam out to sea I saw the bottom as through
glass.
How different at Dagomise! All night long it had thundered. I slept
under a wooden bridge that spanned a dried-up river. The lightning
played all about me, the rain roared, the thunder crashed overhead.
The storm passed, but as the thunder died away from the sky, it broke
out from the sea and roared deafeningly all around. I could not bathe,
for the sea was tremendous. A grand sight presented itself at dawn,
the sea foaming forwards in thousands of billows. Along five miles of
seashore the white horses galloped forward against the rocks, as if
the whole sea were an army arrayed against the land. How the white
pennons flew!
Later in the morning I undressed, and sitting in moderate safety on a
shelf of rock, let the spent billows rush over me. The waves rushed
up the steep beach like tigers for their prey, their eyes turned away
from mine, but full of cruelty and anger. I was, deep in myself,
afear'd.
At what an extraordinary rate the waves rushed up the shore, fast
galloping after one another, accomplishing their fates! There is
only one line I know that tells well of their rate, that glory of
Swinburne:--
Where the dove dipped her wing and the oars won their way,
Where the narrowing Symplègades whiten the straits of Propontis
with spray.