s build their hayricks, redolent of rural
life, and set up their stacks of brown turf. Geese and ducks, whose
natural play places are muddy pools and inland streams, swim through the
salt water in the sheltered bays below the cottages. Pigs, driven down
to the shore to root among the rotting seaweed, splash knee deep in
the sea. At the time of high spring tides, in March and at the end of
September, the water flows in oily curves or splashes muddily against
the very thresholds of the cottages. It penetrates the brine-soaked soil
and wells turn brackish. It wanders far inland through winding straits.
The wayfarer, stepping across what seems to be a ditch at the end of
a field far from the sea wonders to hear brown wrack crackle under his
feet.

A few hours later the land asserts itself again. The sea draws back
sullenly at first. Soon its retreat becomes a very flight. The narrow
ways between the islands, calm an hour before, are like swift rivers.
Through the cleft gaps in the breakwater of boulders the sea goes back
from its adventurous wanderings to the ocean outside; but not as in
other places, where a deep felt homing impulse draws tired water to the
voluminous mother bosom of the Atlantic. Here, even on the calmest days,
steep wavelets curl and break over each other, like fugitives driven
to desperate flight by some maddening fear, prepared, so great is the
terror behind them, to trample on their own comrades in the race for
security. One after another all over the bay the wrack-clad backs of
rocks appear. Long swathes of brown slimy weed, tugging at submerged
roots, lie writhing on the surface of the ebbing streams. The islands
grow larger. Confused heaps of round boulders appear under their western
bluffs. Cormorants perch in flocks on shining stones, stretching out
their narrow wings, peering through tiny black eyes at the withdrawal
of the sea. On the eastern shores of every island, stretches of
pebble-strewn mud widen rapidly. The boats below the cottages lie
dejected, mutely re-reproachful of the anchors which have held them back
from following the departed waters. Soft green banks appear here and
there, broaden, join one another, until whole stretches of the bay,
miles of it, show this pale sea grass instead of water. Only the few
deep channels remain, with their foolish stranded buoys and their high
useless perches, to witness to the fact that at evening time the sea
will claim its own again.

Very wonder