Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

_July 16._-The Jalan Pantai, or the seashore road, of Ternate, has an affinity with that prelude to the day when the risen sun has still to surmount the high land of Halmaheira across the sea; or so you think till you are sauntering there when the sun has fallen behind the volcano at the back of you. The truth is, that path is so responsive to light that morning is there before its hour, and day remains when the sun has gone. This morning the path by the beach was as elated as though with good tidings which a stranger like myself could not be expected to understand. I did not know the reason for its joy, but I could share it. It was high water. The sea itself could have been the dawn. A sailing canoe, with prow and stern so shaped that the craft was like a black swan with a head at each end of its long body, was flying in the brightness between us and that land which lay athwart the east. Tamarinds and other trees made a dark roof to the path, but the light came low and level through their colonnade. One tree had strewn the road with white corollas, the size of goblets, and their stamens were long tassels of white silk tipped with pink. Careless bounty! By the jetty was a stall for the fishermen, with coffee, fried cakes of fish, pineapples, and mangosteens; some cockatoos and lories sat on the branch of a tamarind beside it. The high peak of Tidore was the first to see the sun, and signaled the news to us from a cloud.

From the end of the pier I thought I could see through the water even to the little stones lying on the sea floor in five fathoms. Corals and sea-growths were darkly grouped about the greenish pallor of tracks in that garden. The coral was tall and branched, or was in rounded beds. Its shapes wavered and pulsed in the unseen movements of the crystal. It dilated and diminished in areas of olive green, orange, crimson, and gray. It appeared to be not much below the surface of the glass, but bonitos like torpedoes of blue light glanced over it in midspace and changed the illusion, and other fish, like oscillating silver coins, like tinted glow lamps intermittently charged, like swooping black and yellow butterflies, like the petals of flowers quivering in a zephyr, deepened and extended the sight. Their vivid forms would appear suddenly where there had been nothing, and then, like apparitions, become absorbed in their element. The heat of the day, which had come, was unnoticed.