Chapter 33
The beauty of the Sea was not lost on him, for all his preoccupation
with the Island. Every day it revealed new wonders, and more and more
he came to realize that it was not only a home and harbinger of infinite
life, but a living, tangible thing unto itself. When Sylviana told him
it had been the birthplace of life on Earth he was not surprised. When
she remarked that little seemed to have changed, despite the nuclear
holocaust, he believed, and felt quietly reassured.
But he also saw clearly the darker, more savage aspect of the waters,
which the poetic (usually from the detached safety of an untroubled ship
or peaceful shoreline) often seemed to overlook. For if the Valley had
been ruthless and produced, with few exceptions, a grim array of
thoughtless, thankless creatures, their only creed survival of the
fittest, then the Sea was the very creator, and composer of the theme.
Fierce, desperate mating followed by birth in huge numbers, of which not
one in a hundred reached adulthood to fight and breed again, seemed the
unbroken rule of this world without shelter, where life and death chased
each other like madness, and none were immune.
One morning he watched as a pair of tiny animals, some forgotten
offshoot of the hermit crab, dueled at the bottom of a small, clear
tidal pool for the affections of a waiting female.
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