"My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the
land, and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock
to rock like a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung
seeking a harbour. There I stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw
myself in the chill water.

"I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar;
that I was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a
badger; withered and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a
fish; wretched as a starving crow in winter; and on my fingers
and toes there were great curving claws, so that I looked like
nothing that was known, like nothing that was animal or divine.
And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and wildness and my
stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and lament between
the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me listened
from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me
from their drowsy covert.

"A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw
that great fleet rolling as in a giant's hand. At times they were
pitched against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily
there like wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these
dizzy tops to the flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror
that swirled and whirled between ten waves. At times a wave
leaped howling under a ship, and with a buffet dashed it into
air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke on stroke, and
followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with hammering on
hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out the
frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship
and sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had