vine. And I sat by the pool weeping my loneliness and
wildness and my stern old age; and I could do no more than cry and
lament between the earth and the sky, while the beasts that tracked me
listened from behind the trees, or crouched among bushes to stare at me
from their drowsy covert.

"A storm arose, and when I looked again from my tall cliff I saw that
great fleet rolling as in a giant's hand. At times they were pitched
against the sky and staggered aloft, spinning gustily there like
wind-blown leaves. Then they were hurled from these dizzy tops to the
flat, moaning gulf, to the glassy, inky horror that swirled and whirled
between ten waves. At times a wave leaped howling under a ship, and with
a buffet dashed it into air, and chased it upwards with thunder stroke
on stroke, and followed again, close as a chasing wolf, trying with
hammering on hammering to beat in the wide-wombed bottom and suck out
the frightened lives through one black gape. A wave fell on a ship and
sunk it down with a thrust, stern as though a whole sky had tumbled at
it, and the barque did not cease to go down until it crashed and sank in
the sand at the bottom of the sea.

"The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the
screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an
inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. For
a great wind strode the world lashing its league-long whips in cracks
of thunder, and singing to itself, now in a world-wide yell, now in an
ear-dizzying hum and buzz; or with a long snarl and whine it hovered
over the world searching for life to destroy.

"And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there
came a sound--thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as
though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence--and I knew that
a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered
into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her
hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.

"Around me the trees were dragged from earth with dying groans; they
leaped into the air and flew like birds. Great waves whizzed from the
sea: spinning across the cliffs and hurtling to the earth in monstrous
clots of foam; the very rocks came trundling and sidling and grinding
among the trees; and in that rage, and in that horror of blackness I
fell asleep, or I was beaten into slumber."

CHAPT