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"La alma."[3]
The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his own meditation,
and a little while afterwards the Matutina left the gulf.
Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean in the spaces
between the foam was slimy in appearance. The waves, seen through the
twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here
and there a wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of
glass broken by stones; in the centre of these stars, in a revolving
orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that feline reflection, of
vanished light which shines in the eyeballs of owls.
Proudly, like a bold swimmer, the Matutina crossed the dangerous
Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of
Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre--a circus of
sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves--an
arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau, only drowned--a
coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency
which engulfs him,--such is the Shambles shoal. There hydras fight,
leviathans meet. There, says the legend, at the bottom of the gigantic
shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized and sunk by the huge spider
Kraken, also called the fish-mountain. Such things lie in the fearful
shadow of the sea.
These spectral realities, unknown to man, are manifested at the surface
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