aw a beech-tree by the
white road stand up little and defiant. It grew bigger and bigger with
blinding rapidity. It charged me like a tilting knight, seemed to hack
at my head, and pass by. Sometimes when we went round a curve of road,
the effect was yet more awful. It seemed as if some tree or windmill
swung round to smite like a boomerang. The sun by this time was a
blazing fact; and I saw that all Nature is chivalrous and militant. We
do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort
of war; and see all the trees as green banners.

.....

I gave my address, arriving just when everybody was deciding to leave.
When my cab came reeling into the market-place they decided, with
evident disappointment, to remain. Over the lecture I draw a veil.
When I came back home I was called to the telephone, and a meek voice
expressed regret for the failure of the motor-cab, and even said
something about any reasonable payment. "Whom can I pay for my own
superb experience? What is the usual charge for seeing the clouds
shattered by the sun? What is the market price of a tree blue on the
sky-line and then blinding white in the sun? Mention your price for that
windmill that stood behind the hollyhocks in the garden. Let me pay you
for..." Here it was, I think, that we were cut off.

XXVI. The Two Noises

For three days and three nights the sea had charged England as Napoleon
charged her at Waterloo. The phrase is instinctive, because away to
the last grey line of the sea there was only the look of galloping
squadrons, impetuous, but with a common purpose. The sea came on like
cavalry, and when it touched the shore it opened the blazing eyes and
deafening tongues of the artillery. I saw the worst assault at night on
a seaside parade where the sea smote on the doors of England with the
hammers of earthquake, and a white smoke went up into the black heavens.
There one could thoroughly realise what an awful thing a wave really is.
I talk like other people about the rushing swiftness of a wave. But the
horrible thing about a wave is its hideous slowness. It lifts its load
of water laboriously: in that style at once slow and slippery in which
a Titan might lift a load of rock and then let it slip at last to be
shattered into shock of dust. In front of me that night the waves were
not like water: they were like falling city walls. The breaker rose
first as if it did not wish to attack the earth; it wished only t