sherman, after having consulted some mysterious gnomon engraved by the
Romans or by demons upon one of those straight enigmatical stones, which
are called in Brittany _Menhir_, and in Ireland _Cruach_, hauls his boat
up on the shore.

Meanwhile the serenity of sky and ocean continues. The day dawns
radiant, and Aurora smiles. It was this which filled the old poets and
seers with religious horror; for men dared to suspect the falsity of
the sun. _Solem quis dicere falsum audeat?_

The sombre vision of nature's secret laws is interdicted to man by the
fatal opacity of surrounding things. The most terrible and perfidious of
her aspects is that which masks the convulsions of the deep.

Some hours, and even days sometimes, pass thus. Pilots raise their
telescopes here and there. The faces of old seamen have always an
expression of severity left upon them by the vexation of perpetually
looking out for changes.

Suddenly a great confused murmur is heard. A sort of mysterious dialogue
takes place in the air.

Nothing unusual is seen.

The wide expanse is tranquil.

Yet the noises increase. The dialogue becomes more audible.

There is something beyond the horizon.

Something terrible. It is the wind.

The wind; or rather that populace of Titans which we call the gale. The
unseen multitude.

India knew them as the Maroubs, Judea as the Keroubim, Greece as the
Aquilones. They are the invisible winged creatures of the Infinite.
Their blasts sweep over the earth.

II

THE OCEAN WINDS

They come from the immeasurable deep. Their wide wings need the breadth
of the ocean gulf; the spaciousness of desert solitudes. The Atlantic,
the Pacific--those vast blue plains--are their delight. They hasten
thither in flocks. Commander Page witnessed, far out at sea, seven
waterspouts at once. They wander there, wild and terrible! The
ever-ending yet eternal flux and reflux is their work. The extent of
their power, the limits of their will, none know. They are the Sphinxes
of the abyss: Gama was their oedipus. In that dark, ever-moving expanse,
they appear with faces of cloud. He who perceives their pale lineaments
in that wide dispersion, the horizon of the sea, feels himself in
presence of an unsubduable power. It might be imagined that the
proximity of human intelligence disquieted them, and that they revolted
against it. The mind of man is invincible, but the elements baffle him.
He can do nothing against the power wh