--days
born in rose-light, buried in gold. It was the height of the season.
The long myrtle-shadowed village was thronged with its summer
population;--the big hotel could hardly accommodate all its
guests;--the bathing-houses were too few for the crowds who flocked to
the water morning and evening. There were diversions for all,--hunting
and fishing parties, yachting excursions, rides, music, games,
promenades. Carriage wheels whirled flickering along the beach,
seaming its smoothness noiselessly, as if muffled. Love wrote its
dreams upon the sand...

... Then one great noon, when the blue abyss of day seemed to yawn over
the world more deeply than ever before, a sudden change touched the
quicksilver smoothness of the waters--the swaying shadow of a vast
motion. First the whole sea-circle appeared to rise up bodily at the
sky; the horizon-curve lifted to a straight line; the line darkened and
approached,--a monstrous wrinkle, an immeasurable fold of green water,
moving swift as a cloud-shadow pursued by sunlight. But it had looked
formidable only by startling contrast with the previous placidity of
the open: it was scarcely two feet high;--it curled slowly as it
neared the beach, and combed itself out in sheets of woolly foam with a
low, rich roll of whispered thunder. Swift in pursuit another
followed--a third--a feebler fourth; then the sea only swayed a little,
and stilled again. Minutes passed, and the immeasurable heaving
recommenced--one, two, three, four ... seven long swells this
time;--and the Gulf smoothed itself once more. Irregularly the
phenomenon continued to repeat itself, each time with heavier billowing
and briefer intervals of quiet--until at last the whole sea grew
restless and shifted color and flickered green;--the swells became
shorter and changed form. Then from horizon to shore ran one
uninterrupted heaving--one vast green swarming of snaky shapes, rolling
in to hiss and flatten upon the sand. Yet no single cirrus-speck
revealed itself through all the violet heights: there was no
wind!--you might have fancied the sea had been upheaved from beneath ...

And indeed the fancy of a seismic origin for a windless surge would not
appear in these latitudes to be utterly without foundation. On the
fairest days a southeast breeze may bear you an odor singular enough to
startle you from sleep,--a strong, sharp smell as of fish-oil; and
gazing at the sea you might be still more startled at th