faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and
their loose hair was a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about their
heads and necks composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet
and shining like spun glass-hair that looked as if no comb or brush
could ever tame its beautiful wildness. And in spirit they were what
they seemed: such a wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit with such grace and
fleetness one does not look for in human beings, but only in birds or
in some small bird-like volatile mammal--a squirrel or a marmoset of the
tropical forest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes,
the swiftest, wildest, loveliest, most airy and most vocal of small
beasties. Occasionally to watch their wonderful motions more closely and
have speech with them, I followed when they raced over the sands or flew
about over the slippery rocks, and felt like a cochin-china fowl, or
muscovy duck, or dodo, trying to keep pace with a humming-bird. Their
voices were well suited to their small brilliant forms; not loud, though
high-pitched and singularly musical and penetrative, like the high
clear notes of a skylark at a distance. They also reminded me of
certain notes, which have a human quality, in some of our songsters--the
swallow, redstart, pied wagtail, whinchat, and two or three others. Such
pure and beautiful sounds are sometimes heard in human voices, chiefly
in children, when they are talking and laughing in joyous excitement.
But for any sort of conversation they were too volatile; before I could
get a dozen words from them they would be off again, flying and
flitting along the margin, like sandpipers, and beating the clear-voiced
sandpiper at his own aerial graceful game.

By and by I was favoured with a fine exhibition of the spirit animating
these two little things. The weather had made it possible for the crowd
of visitors to go down and scatter itself over the beach, when the usual
black cloud sprang up and soon burst on us in a furious tempest of
wind and rain, sending the people flying back to the shelter of a large
structure erected for such purposes against the cliff. It was a vast
barn-like place, open to the front, the roof supported by wooden
columns, and here in a few minutes some three or four hundred persons
were gathered, mostly women and their girls, white and blue-eyed with
long wet golden hair hanging down their backs. Finding a vacant place
on the bench, I sat down next to a large motherly-l