I will now endeavor to explain the impression that the sea made upon
me at our first brief and melancholy encounter, which took place at
twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the Island.
Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see it, it had so
remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it was engraven upon
my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder run through me when my
spirit broods upon the recollection.
We had but newly arrived at this village near St. Ongeoise where my
parents had rented a fisherman's house for the bathing season. I knew
that we had come here for something called the sea, but I had had
no glimpse of it (a line of dunes hid it from me because of my short
stature), and I was extremely impatient to become acquainted with it;
therefore after dinner, as night was falling, I went alone to seek this
mysterious thing.
The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had experienced, and
from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the path led, there came a
faint but majestic noise. Everything affrighted me, the unfamiliar way,
the twilight falling from the overcast sky, and the loneliness of this
part of the village. But inspired by one of those great and sudden
resolutions, that come sometimes to the most timid, I went forward with
a firm step.
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
anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and
with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the
extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling
close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me
for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my
heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.