How long they stood and watched the stately procession of breakers, rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled to herself when Billy, laughing, tried to remove the telescope basket from her shoulders.
“You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while,” he said. “So we might as well get comfortable.”
“I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it,” she repeated, with passionately5 clasped hands. “I... I thought the surf at the Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.—Oh! Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the sunlight flashing right through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at the sea-horizon of deepest peacock-blue and piled with cloud-masses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point of rocks, and at the rugged6 blue mountains seen across soft low hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.
“Might as well sit down an' take it easy,” Billy indulged her. “This is too good to want to run away from all at once.”
“You ain't a-goin' to?” Billy asked in surprised delight, then began unlacing his own.
But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous8 fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a thatch9 of curly yellow hair, but his body was hugely thewed as a Hercules'.
“Gee!—must be Sandow,” Billy muttered low to Saxon.
But she was thinking of the engraving10 in her mother's scrapbook and of the Vikings on the wet sands of England.
The runner passed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand, never pausing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above him, ten feet at least, upreared a wall of overtopping water. Huge and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile in the face of that imminent11, great-handed buffet12 of the sea. Saxon gasped13 with anxiety, and she stole a look at Billy to note that he was tense with watching.
But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it seemed he must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker and disappeared. The mighty14 mass of water fell in thunder on the beach, but beyond appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching, and a portion of a shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to make ere he was compelled to dive through another breaker. This was the battle—to win seaward against the sweep of the shoreward hastening sea. Each time he dived and was lost to view Saxon caught her breath and clenched15 her hands. Sometimes, after the passage of a breaker, they could not find him, and when they did he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip by a smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the outer edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but topping the waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals16 could they find the speck17 of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon and Billy looked at each other, she with amazement18 at the swimmer's valor19, Billy with blue eyes flashing.
“Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer,” he praised. “Nothing chicken-hearted about him.—Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an' bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I could do that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet of me. Why, Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than own a thousan' farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a fish—I swum, one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge20 Pier21 to Sessions' Basin, an' that's miles—but I never seen anything like that guy in the swimmin' line. An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until he comes back.—All by his lonely out there in a mountain sea, think of it! He's got his nerve all right, all right.”
Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing each other with brandished22 snakes of seaweed and playing like children for an hour. It was not until they were putting on their shoes that they sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy was at the edge of the surf to meet him, emerging, not white-skinned as he had entered, but red from the pounding he had received at the hands of the sea.
“It was a big surf to-day,” the young man replied, with a nod of acknowledgment.
“It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?” Billy queried25, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the physical prodigy26.
The other laughed and shook his head, and Billy could not guess that he was an ex-captain of a 'Varsity Eleven, and incidentally the father of a family and the author of many books. He looked Billy over with an eye trained in measuring freshmen27 aspirants28 for the gridiron.
“You're some body of a man,” he appreciated. “You'd strip with the best of them. Am I right in guessing that you know your way about in the ring?”
Billy nodded. “My name's Roberts.”
“Bill—Bill Roberts,” Billy supplemented.
“Oh, ho!—Not BIG Bill Roberts? Why, I saw you fight, before the earthquake, in the Mechanic's Pavilion. It was a preliminary to Eddie Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter, I remember that, with an awful wallop, but slow. Yes, I remember, you were slow that night, but you got your man.” He put out a wet hand. “My name's Hazard—Jim Hazard.”
“An' if you're the football coach that was, a couple of years ago, I've read about you in the papers. Am I right?”
They shook hands heartily31, and Saxon was introduced. She felt very small beside the two young giants, and very proud, withal, that she belonged to the race that gave them birth. She could only listen to them talk.
“I'd like to put on the gloves with you every day for half an hour,” Hazard said. “You could teach me a lot. Are you going to stay around here?”
“No. We're goin' on down the coast, lookin' for land. Just the same, I could teach you a few, and there's one thing you could teach me—surf swimmin'.”
“I'll swap32 lessons with you any time,” Hazard offered. He turned to Saxon. “Why don't you stop in Carmel for a while? It isn't so bad.”
“It's beautiful,” she acknowledged, with a grateful smile, “but—” She turned and pointed33 to their packs on the edge of the lupine. “We're on the tramp, and lookin' for government land.”
“If you're looking down past the Sur for it, it will keep,” he laughed. “Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If you come back this way, look me up. Anybody will tell you where I live. So long.”
And, as he had first arrived, he departed, crossing the sandhills on the run.
Billy followed him with admiring eyes.
“Some boy, some boy,” he murmured. “Why, Saxon, he's famous. If I've seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man. Say!—I'm beginnin' to have faith in the old stock again.”
They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street bought meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag Saxon away from the window of a fascinating shop where were iridescent34 pearls of abalone, set and unset.
“Abalones grow here, all along the coast,” Billy assured her; “an' I'll get you all you want. Low tide's the time.”
“My father had a set of cuff-buttons made of abalone shell,” she said. “They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven35't thought about them for years, and I wonder who has them now.”
They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the quaint pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not prepared, where the road dipped to Carmel River, for the building that met their eyes.
“I know what it is,” Saxon almost whispered. “It's an old Spanish Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and converting the Indians.”
“Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit36 an' caboodle,” Billy observed with calm satisfaction.
“Just the same, it's wonderful,” Saxon mused37, gazing at the big, half-ruined adobe38 structure. “There is the Mission Dolores, in San Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old.”
Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken39 by human being and human habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and chalk-rock stood hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe ruins which once had housed its worshiping thousands. The spirit of the place descended40 upon Saxon and Billy, and they walked softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the open ports. There was neither priest nor worshiper, yet they found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy judged must be small from the number of the benches. Later they climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn timbers; and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of their voices, Saxon, trembling at her own temerity41, softly sang the opening bars of “Jesus Lover of My Soul.” Delighted with the result, she leaned over the railing, gradually increasing her voice to its full strength as she sang:
“Jesus, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom42 fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is nigh. Hide me, O my Saviour43, hide, Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide And receive my soul at last.”
Billy leaned against the ancient wall and loved her with his eyes, and, when she had finished, he murmured, almost in a whisper:
“That was beautiful—just beautiful. An' you ought to a-seen your face when you sang. It was as beautiful as your voice. Ain't it funny?—I never think of religion except when I think of you.”
They camped in the willow44 bottom, cooked dinner, and spent the afternoon on the point of low rocks north of the mouth of the river. They had not intended to spend the afternoon, but found themselves too fascinated to turn away from the breakers bursting upon the rocks and from the many kinds of colorful sea life -- starfish, crabs45, mussels, sea anemones46, and, once, in a rock-pool, a small devilfish that chilled their blood when it cast the hooded47 net of its body around the small crabs they tossed to it. As the tide grew lower, they gathered a mess of mussels—huge fellows, five and six inches long and bearded like patriarchs. Then, while Billy wandered in a vain search for abalones, Saxon lay and dabbled48 in the crystal-clear water of a rock-pool, dipping up handfuls of glistening49 jewels—ground bits of shell and pebble50 of flashing rose and blue and green and violet. Billy came back and lay beside her, lazying in the sea-cool sunshine, and together they watched the sun sink into the horizon where the ocean was deepest peacock-blue.
She reached out her hand to Billy's and sighed with sheer repletion51 of content. It seemed she had never lived such a wonderful day. It was as if all old dreams were coming true. Such beauty of the world she had never guessed in her fondest imagining. Billy pressed her hand tenderly.
“What was you thinkin' of?” he asked, as they arose finally to go.
“Oh, I don't know, Billy. Perhaps that it was better, one day like this, than ten thousand years in Oakland.”
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1
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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10
engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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buffet
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| n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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gauge
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| v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器 | |
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pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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brandished
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| v.挥舞( brandish的过去式和过去分词 )；炫耀 | |
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outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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freshmen
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| n.（中学或大学的）一年级学生( freshman的名词复数 ) | |
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aspirants
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| n.有志向或渴望获得…的人( aspirant的名词复数 )v.渴望的，有抱负的，追求名誉或地位的( aspirant的第三人称单数 )；有志向或渴望获得…的人 | |
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29
scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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kit
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| n.用具包，成套工具；随身携带物 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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adobe
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| n.泥砖，土坯，美国Adobe公司 | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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temerity
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| n.鲁莽，冒失 | |
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42
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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44
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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46
anemones
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| n.银莲花( anemone的名词复数 )；海葵 | |
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hooded
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| adj.戴头巾的；有罩盖的；颈部因肋骨运动而膨胀的 | |
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48
dabbled
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| v.涉猎( dabble的过去式和过去分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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49
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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50
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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51
repletion
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| n.充满，吃饱 | |
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