tands most conspicuous. You may follow
it from the Nene above Sutton Bridge right over to Lynn River, and again
northward from Sutton Bridge (or rather, from the ferry above it) right
round _outside_ Long Sutton and Holbeach, and by Forsdyke Bridge and
_outside_ Swyneshead; everywhere it encloses and protects the old
parishes, and everywhere seaward of it the names of the fields mark the
newest of endeavours.

* * * * *

We returned from a long wandering upon the desolate edges of the sea to
the bank which we proposed to follow right round to the mouth of the
Ouse: a bank that runs not straight, but in great broken lines, as in
old-fashioned fortification, and from which far off upon the right one
sees the famous churches of the Wringland, far off upon the left a hint
beyond the marshes and the sands of the very distant open sea.

A gale had risen with the morning, and while it invigorated the
travellers in these wastes it seemed to increase their loneliness, for
it broke upon nothing, and it removed the interest of the eye from the
monotonous sad land to the charge and change of the torn sky above, but
in a sense also it impelled us, as though we were sailing before it as
it swept along the edge of the bank and helped us to forget the
interminable hours.

The birds for whom this estuary is a kind of sanctuary and a place of
secure food in all weathers, the birds swept out in great flocks over
the flats towards the sea. They were the only companionship afforded to
us upon this long day, and they had, or I fancied they had, in their
demeanour a kind of contempt for the rare human beings they might see,
as though knowing how little man could do upon those sands. They fed all
together upon the edge of the water, upon the edge of the falling tide,
very far off, making long bands of white that mixed with the tiny
breaking wavelets. Now and then they rose in bodies, and so rising
disappeared; but as they would turn and wheel against the wind, seeking
some other ground, they sent from moment to moment flashes of delicate
and rare light from the great multitude of their wings. I know of
nothing to which one may compare these glimpses of evanescent shining
but these two things--the flash of a sword edge and the rapid turning in
human hands of a diaphanous veil held in the light. It shone or glinted
for a moment, then they would all wheel together and it disappeared.

So, watching them as a kin