union with
the tempest. The nuptials are prepared. Like the marriages of the
ancient emperors, they are celebrated with immolations. The fete is
heralded with disasters.

Meanwhile, from yonder deeps, from the great open sea, from the
unapproachable latitudes, from the lurid horizon of the watery waste,
from the utmost bounds of the free ocean, the winds pour down.

Listen; for this is the famous equinox.

The storm prepares mischief. In the old mythology these entities were
recognised, indistinctly moving, in the grand scene of nature. Eolus
plotted with Boreas. The alliance of element with element is necessary;
they divide their task. One has to give impetus to the wave, the cloud,
the stream: night is an auxiliary, and must be employed. There are
compasses to be falsified, beacons to be extinguished, lanterns of
lighthouses to be masked, stars to be hidden. The sea must lend her aid.
Every storm is preceded by a murmur. Behind the horizon line there is a
premonitory whispering among the hurricanes.

This is the noise which is heard afar off in the darkness amidst the
terrible silence of the sea.

It was this significant whispering which Gilliatt had noted. The
phosphorescence on the water had been the first warning: this murmur the
second.

If the demon Legion exists, he is assuredly no other than the wind.

The wind is complex, but the air is one.

Hence it follows that all storms are mixed--a principle which results
from the unity of the air.

The entire abyss of heaven takes part in a tempest: the entire ocean
also. The totality of its forces is marshalled for the strife. A wave is
the ocean gulf; a gust is a gulf of the atmosphere. A contest with a
storm is a contest with all the powers of sea and sky.

It was Messier, that great authority among naval men, the pensive
astronomer of the little lodge at Cluny, who said, "The wind comes from
everywhere and is everywhere." He had no faith in the idea of winds
imprisoned even in inland seas. With him there were no Mediterranean
winds; he declared that he recognised them as they wandered about the
earth. He affirmed that on a certain day, at a certain hour, the Foehn of
the Lake of Constance, the ancient Favonius of Lucretius, had traversed
the horizon of Paris; on another day, the Bora of the Adriatic; on
another day, the whirling Notus, which is supposed to be confined in the
round of the Cyclades. He indicated their currents. He did not believe
it impos