grim chase of vessels
in distress. They have their packs of bloodhounds, and take their
pleasure, setting them to bark among the rocks and billows. They huddle
the clouds together, and drive them diverse. They mould and knead the
supple waters as with a million hands.

The water is supple because it is incompressible. It slips away without
effort. Borne down on one side, it escapes on the other. It is thus that
waters become waves, and that the billows are a token of their liberty.

III

THE NOISES EXPLAINED

The grand descent of winds upon the world takes place at the equinoxes.
At this period the balance of tropic and pole librates, and the vast
atmospheric tides pour their flood upon one hemisphere and their ebb
upon another. The signs of Libra and Aquarius have reference to these
phenomena.

It is the time of tempests.

The sea awaits their coming, keeping silence.

Sometimes the sky looks sickly. Its face is wan. A thick dark veil
obscures it. The mariners observe with uneasiness the angry aspect of
the clouds.

But it is its air of calm contentment which they dread the most. A
smiling sky in the equinoxes is the tempest in gay disguise. It was
under skies like these that "The Tower of Weeping Women," in Amsterdam,
was filled with wives and mothers scanning the far horizon.

When the vernal or autumnal storms delay to break, they are gathering
strength; hoarding up their fury for more sure destruction. Beware of
the gale that has been long delayed. It was Angot who said that "the sea
pays well old debts."

When the delay is unusually long, the sea betokens her impatience only
by a deeper calm, but the magnetic intensity manifests itself by what
might be called a fiery humour in the sea. Fire issues from the waves;
electric air, phosphoric water. The sailors feel a strange lassitude.
This time is particularly perilous for iron vessels; their hulls are
then liable to produce variations of the compass, leading them to
destruction. The transatlantic steam-vessel _Iowa_ perished from this
cause.

To those who are familiar with the sea, its aspect at these moments is
singular. It may be imagined to be both desiring and fearing the
approach of the cyclone. Certain unions, though strongly urged by
nature, are attended by this strange conjunction of terror and desire.
The lioness in her tenderest moods flies from the lion. Thus the sea, in
the fire of her passion, trembles at the near approach of her