ut intermission for three or four days
and nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be
unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the
complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water,
from its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere creamy foam,
but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths
from wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon
like a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,
which make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are
a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in
their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the
water is under a great cataract,--and their masses, being thus half
water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise,
and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like
actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
finely divided water, but with boiling mist: imagine also the low
rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to
wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch
of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
precipices and peaks furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all
this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
nor any landmark, or natural evidence of position is left; that the
heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no
farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract.[21]

[21] The whole of this was written merely to show the meaning of
Turner's picture of the steamer in distress, throwing up signals. It is
a good study of wild weather; but, separate from its aim, utterly feeble
in comparison to the few words by which any of the great poets will
describe sea, when they have got to do it. I am rather proud of the
short sentence in the 'Harbours of England,' describing a great breaker
against rock:--"One moment, a flint cave,--the next, a marble
pillar,--the next, a fading cloud." But th