On (Essays Collection). Hilaire Belloc

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      THE LANDFALL

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      It was in Oxford Street and upon the top of an omnibus during one of those despairing winter days, the light just gone, and an air rising which was neither vigorous nor cold, but sodden like the hearts of all around, that I fell wondering whether there were some ultimate goal for men, and whether these adventures of ours, which grow tamer and so much tamer as the years proceed, are lost at last in a blank nothingness, or whether there are revelations and discoveries to come. This debate in the mind is very old; every man revolves it, none has affirmed a solution, though all the wisest of men have accepted a received answer from authority external to themselves. I was not on that murky evening concerned with authority, but with the old problem or rather mood of wonder upon the fate of the soul.

      As I so mused to the jolting of the bus I began unconsciously to compare the keenness of early living with the satiety or weariness of later years; and so from one thing to another, I know not how, I thought of horses first, and then of summer rivers, and then of a harbour, and then of the open sea, and then of the sea at night, till this vague train took on the form of an exact picture, and my mind lived in an unforgotten day.

      * * * * *

      In my little boat, with my companion asleep in the bows, I steered at the end of darkness eastward over a warm and easy sea.

      It was August: the roll was lazy, and the stars were few and distant all around, because the sky, though clear, was softened by the pleasant air of summer at its close; moreover, an arch of the sky before me was paling and the sea-breeze smelt of dawn.

      My little boat went easy, as the sea was easy. There was just enough of a following wind dead west to keep her steady and to keep the boom square in its place right out a-lee, nor did she shake or swing (as boats so often will before a following wind), but went on with a purpose gently, like a young woman just grown used to her husband and her home. So she sailed, and aft we left a little, bubbling wake, which in the darkness had glimmered with evanescent and magic fires, but now, as the morning broadened, could be seen to be white foam. The stars paled for an hour and then soon vanished; although the sun had not yet risen, it was day.

      The line of the horizon before me was fresh and sharp, clear tops of swell showed hard against the faint blue of the lowest sky, and for some time we were thus alone together in the united and living immensity of the sea: my sleeping companion, my boat, and I. Then it was that I perceived a little northward and to the left of the rising glow a fixed appearance very far away beyond the edge of the world; it was grey and watery like a smoke, yet fixed in outline and unchanging; it did not waver but stood, and so standing confirmed its presence. It was land; and this dim but certain vision which now fixed my gaze was one of the mighty headlands of holy Ireland.

      The noble hill lifted its mass upon the extreme limits of sight, almost dissolved by distance and yet clear; its summit was high and plain, and in the moment it was perceived the sea became a new thing. It was no longer void or absorbing, but became familiar water neighbourly to men; and was now that ocean, whose duty and meaning it is to stream around and guard the shores on which are founded cities and armies, families and enduring homes. The little boat sailed on, now in the mood for companions and for friends.

      My companion stirred and woke; he raised himself upon his arm, and, looking forward to the left and right, at last said, “Land!” I told him the name of the headland. But I did not know that there lay beyond it a long and narrow bay, nor how, at the foot of this land-locked water, a group of small white houses stood, and behind it a very venerable tower.

      It was not long before the sun came up out of a sea more clear and into a sky more vivid than you will see within the soundings of the Channel. It poured upon all the hills an enlivening new light quite different from the dawn, and this was especially noticeable upon the swell and the little ridges of it, which danced and shone so that one thought of music.

      Meanwhile the land grew longer before us and this one headland merged into the general line, and inland heights could be seen; a little later again it first became possible to distinguish the divisions of the fields and the separate colours of rocks and of grassland and of trees. A little while later again the white thread showed all along that coast where the water broke at the meeting of the rocks and the sea; the tide was at the flood.

      We had, perhaps, three miles between us and the land (where every detail now stood out quite sharp and clear) when the wind freshened suddenly and, after the boat had heeled as suddenly and run for a moment with the scuppers under, she recovered and bounded forward. It was like obedience to a call, or like the look that comes suddenly into men’s eyes when they hear unexpectedly a familiar name. She lifted at it and she took the sea, for the sea began to rise.

      Then there began that dance of vigour which is almost a combat, when men sail with skill and under some stress of attention and of danger. I would not take in an inch because of the pleasure of it, but she was over-canvased all the same, and I put her ever so little round for fear of a gybe, but the pleasure of it was greater than the СКАЧАТЬ