THE MOANING OF THE REEF.

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 87

THE MOANING OF THE REEF.

Bx a Banker

At the mouth of n love'y ptii of the sea in the South of England is a dangerous reefj which at times uitt,i& a piamtm., \.«ning moan, presaging a dangerous storm, and warning the hardy toilers of the deep to refrain from venturing over the bar. The long inlet or creek is fringed in places with a belt of noble trees, and in the late autumn is a very blaze of many-hued beauty, the trees garbed in all manner of vivid tints, ranging from gold and brilliant timber to carmine, burnished copper, and deep amethyst. The lofty buttiessed cliffs which guard the entrance to this nature-favoured creek are dyed a- rich, full vermilion, the green verdure which clothc3 theii undulating summits enhancing the vigorous colourings of these rocky ramparts ; while the broad arm of the sea, flecked with th white or scarlet sails of numerous yachts, 13 sparkling in the lays of the sun as though gemmed with diamonds.

But as the shades of evening approach the breeze has freshened, and the rapidly more and more agitated sea is bedecked with tufts of foam; the sun sets in a lurid coppery bank of clouds ; the sea birds, with those also which love to flit along the shore and whoso home is either on the rough herbage at the foot of the cliffs or m little caverns hewn out of the sandstone, are all seeking a place of safety from the coming* storm. And now can be heard, wafted from p.fai, the sad moaning of the bar, a piteous dolorous wail, which from time to time the imagination can resolve iato a sob of lament, as though that mournful dirge were the funeral knell ol some gallant ship which had been engulphed by the deep, entombing its living freight in a' watery sepulchre. And then, as the tide recedes, and the boiling surge is hurled against the bar, the rhythm of that sobbing dirge glides into a more angry measure, and the plaintive moan becomes a fierce, hissing torrent of turmoil and disorder, the terror of the mariner, and in former times the ghastly jubilation of the evilfavoured wreckers, who hoped to make an unholy profit from the wreckage of seme doomed, fated bark. As length the storm moderates, the foaming waves subside, the reef no longer wails its moans and sighs, and the seafarer can safely venture forth to cross the bar.

And a time will come when we too shall all have to cross the bar. Happy they who, having lived the life of the righteous, and whose names are written in Heaven, when their turn comes to cross that bar, with an ecstacy of rejoicing meet their Pilot, who has guided ' them safely through the storms of life, and who, to save them from destruction, shed His ■ life blood for them on the bitter cross.