Page 88 - 1931 Hartridge

5X X
X
b(:
X
X X
X at low tide? Of course, the reason I had never seen the water entirely X X gone from the ocean was that I went to bed so very early that the moon X
had not yet time to draw it all off.
X During the stillness of the night, though, I was sure the ocean bottom X lay empty and dry,—the starlight revealing a world startlingly different
X with its deep, deep new valleys and queer, unfamiliar landscapes, from that
7^ of today, while the surf rolled on the distant coasts and crashed against
X
X
X
X
X
!> X
X
the distant cliffs of the moon. On the earth at night there was utter silence, unbroken by the usual sound of the leaping surge; on the moon was the soft swish of a gently lapping sea, the angry roar of white-capped breakers.
Deep pits, broad plains, and mountain ranges that the sea had always __ %
hidden emerged as the waters withdrew. Harbors were harbors no longer, but large gaps on the surface of the land; seaports were merely settlements built around the edge of a downward-sloping basin. Ships seemed un­ known on our planet, since they too had disappeared with the waters of the
moon. Half the earth appeared lonely and uninhabited, thousands of miles in which there were no dwellings stretching before one.
If I were as sure now as I was then of what happened at low tide, I should say, ‘‘Stand with me on the sands some night and let us watch the sea as it slowly moves back from the shore.’’
X
X
X
X
X X
X X
X
XK XK XX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX
A
Misconception
X C HE waves all vanished from the earth and flowed upon the moon at
X
night; as a child I knew this was absolutely true, for hadn’t Daddy ex­ plained it all by saying that the moon pulled the water away from the earth
XXK
XX XK XX
XK XK XK XK
/\i^e Eighty-four
H., ’33.
X X
X
X
X X