the sea to return a full hour before its wont. So
that when the heathen, on the arrival of their king, were preparing for
a fourth attack with all their forces, the rising sea covered with its
waves the whole of the shore, and floated the ship, which sailed into
the deep. But, greatly glorified by God, and returning Him thanks, with
a South wind they reached Sandwich, a harbour of safety."
[Sidenote: JOHN WESLEY'S TESTIMONY]
The Sussex people, it would seem, do not take kindly to missionaries,
for John Wesley records that he had less success in this county than in
all England.
Between Selsey and Bognor lies Pagham, famous in the pages of Knox's
_Ornithological Rambles_, but otherwise unknown. Of the lost glories of
Pagham, which was once a harbour, but is now dry, let Mr. Knox
speak:--"Here in the dead long summer days, when not a breath of air
has been stirring, have I frequently remained for hours, stretched on
the hot shingle, and gazed at the osprey as he soared aloft, or watched
the little islands of mud at the turn of the tide, as each gradually
rose from the receding waters, and was successively taken possession of
by flocks of sandpipers and ring-dotterels, after various
circumvolutions on the part of each detachment, now simultaneously
presenting their snowy breasts to the sunshine, now suddenly turning
their dusky backs, so that the dazzled eye lost sight of them from the
contrast; while the prolonged cry of the titterel,[2] and the melancholy
note of the peewit from the distant swamp, have mingled with the scream
of the tern and the taunting laugh of the gull.
[Sidenote: PAGHAM'S LOST GLORIES]
"Here have I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point,
and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that
pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on
vacancy, he has stood for hours without a single snap, motionless as a
statue. Here, too, have I pursued the guillemot, or craftily endeavoured
to cut off the retreat of the diver, by mooring my boat across the
narrow passage through which alone he could return to the open sea
without having recourse to his reluctant wings. Nor can I forget how
often, during the Siberian winter of 1838, when 'a whole gale,' as the
sailors have it, has been blowing from the north-east, I used to take up
my position on the long and narrow ridge of shingle which separated this
paradise from the raging waves without, and s
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