approached, stretched, strained, and swung round at last to make
way for the coming of the gale,--even as the light bridges that
traverse the dreamy Teche swing open when luggermen sound through
their conch-shells the long, bellowing signal of approach.

Then the wind began to blow, with the passing of July. It blew
from the northeast, clear, cool. It blew in enormous sighs,
dying away at regular intervals, as if pausing to draw breath.
All night it blew; and in each pause could be heard the answering
moan of the rising surf,--as if the rhythm of the sea moulded
itself after the rhythm of the air,--as if the waving of the
water responded precisely to the waving of the wind,--a billow
for every puff, a surge for every sigh.

The August morning broke in a bright sky;--the breeze still came
cool and clear from the northeast. The waves were running now at
a sharp angle to the shore: they began to carry fleeces, an
innumerable flock of vague green shapes, wind-driven to be
despoiled of their ghostly wool. Far as the eye could follow the
line of the beach, all the slope was white with the great
shearing of them. Clouds came, flew as in a panic against the
face of the sun, and passed. All that day and through the night
and into the morning again the breeze continued from the north.
east, blowing like an equinoctial gale ...

Then day by day the vast breath freshened steadily, and the
waters heightened. A week later sea-bathing had become perilous:

colossal breakers were herding in, like moving leviathan-backs,
twice the height of a man. Still the gale grew, and the