has been dry, and loaded with fine dust, but now it is deliciously wet
and clean. The wind during the summer has changed lightly through all
the points of the compass, but it has never brought any scent save that
of the land, nothing from a distance. Now it is charged with messages
from the ocean.

The sky is not uniformly overcast, but is covered with long horizontal
folds of cloud, very dark below and a little lighter where they turn up
one into the other. They are incessantly modified by the storm, and
fragments are torn away from them which sweep overhead. The sea, looked
at from the height, shows white edges almost to the horizon, and
although the waves at a distance cannot be distinguished, the tossing of
a solitary vessel labouring to get round the point for shelter shows how
vast they are. The prevailing colour of the water is greyish-green,
passing into deep-blue, and perpetually shifting in tint. A quarter of
a mile away the breakers begin, and spread themselves in a white sheet
to the land.

A couple of gulls rise from the base of the cliffs to a height of about
a hundred feet above them. They turn their heads to the south-west, and
hover like hawks, but without any visible movement of their wings. They
are followed by two more, who also poise themselves in the same way.
Presently all four mount higher, and again face the tempest. They do
not appear to defy it, nor even to exert themselves in resisting it.
What to us below is fierce opposition is to them a support and delight.
How these wonderful birds are able to accomplish this feat no
mathematician can tell us. After remaining stationary a few minutes,
they wheel round, once more ascend, and then without any effort go off
to sea directly in the teeth of the hurricane.