Sitting still, she watched her tormenter of the week before, the ocean, who had nearly broken her spirit. Making her prey to its whims and changing moods, it had seemed cruel. Taking pleasure from her abject state, it had whipped up a frenzy and torn at her. She had gone closer, unable to resist its hypnotic pull, her mind feebly resisting while she was forced to look at it. She had gone closer and closer until…
She moved. The spell was broken; she could win, conquer the sickness and the impulse to watch the ocean notwithstanding its impact on her, and afterwards she had started to understand that she could overcome this ocean and come to know, comprehend and love the endless sea that extended before her eyes until it vanished over the skyline. She sat there looking at it, not afraid anymore as it rode alongside her and against her. It was truly like an ensemble, an orchestra of ocean and nature that started with the ocean itself as it swirled and cleared on, the waves riding, thundering, raising along like an arrangement of crescendos and diminuendos taking after one another in fast progression.
Each one in perfect time with the next, they rose and fell away, their places taken over by others, they formed a never-ending procession of white-capped waves. In the distance segments of the main theme appeared then faded quickly into the flow of the movement; patterns were formed, developed, then became interwoven with other patterns like the juxtaposition of first and second themes. The secondary waves beat against the volume of the main flow, but the main theme raced on, pushing everything aside in its path to the climax. The wind joined in the symphony by whipping the peaks off the crested waves and in doing so cast a mantle of spray over the sea. Like another theme, it flitted from wave to wave blending the white caps with the pattern of the swell.
The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the second movement began. The mood changed from one of gaiety to one of somberness and gloom. The sea fumed grey, the white caps disappeared and the sea became angry and turbulent as it crashed against the sides of the ship, trying to drown it and make it succumb. But the ship ploughed ahead, casting the sea from her as her bow forged a path through the turbulence that surrounded her: Like a conductor, she controlled the ocean but there were no light melodies here to ease the burden of the, main theme.
However, the sun returned briefly on its way down to the horizon as if it wanted to bring warmth and peace to the very depths of the ocean. As it sank lower and lower the whole sea seemed to slacken speed; the long waves broadened as they merged more and more into one huge movement and the symphony was almost completed. The final movement was ushered in with the setting of the sun and the, ensuing darkness.
With it, too, came another mood—one of mystery and majesty. In the first movement the sea had been a sparkling blue; then it had turned to grey, with none of the white relief that returned with the sun in the short third movement. Now it seemed content to settle down for the night and was like a huge mill-pond of the deepest blue, which grew inkier and more velvety as night descended and the moon ascended in its path heavenwards.
The stars winked at the ocean, which was transformed under the spotlight of the moon. This brilliance covered the dark majesty of the ocean with a mantle of silver sheen which sparkled and danced before the watcher’s eyes. The only sound was the soft swish as the ship glided on through the balmy night, causing the sea to eddy away from it in a quiet motion–and everything was calm.
The, victor gazed out over the vast ocean and reflected on the symphony she had heard, or better, had witnessed. The vanquished appeared content for a time as it went on in its unending journey to a destination sometime somewhere.
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