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Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often seen them; whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you see no farther than you could see through a cataract....
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" The long surges of the Gulf of Mexico were beating heavily upon the sandy beach of Point Isabel, but the dull and boding sounds were not the roar of the surf. There came a long silence, and then another boom. Each in succession entered the white tents of the American army on the upland, carrying with it a message of especial importance to all who were within.
But the happy lovers paused not till they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll, and seemed alone together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure-sphere which lay beneath their feet. A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. Far beneath them they heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain.
To those in the midst of it it became a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring and thumping of gigantic machinery, complications among the smaller stars. The youth's ears were filled up. They were incapable of hearing more. On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate rushes of men perpetually backward and forward in riotous surges.
One of these consists in threading their way among sunken rocks and dashing surges; another, in breasting the billows of a tempest. It must not be supposed that all Eskimos become efficient in rough work of this kind.
In the time of its author there was nobody in Britain capable of building a bridge, which could have stood against the tremendous surges which occasionally vex the Menai; yet the couplet gives intimation that a bridge over the Menai there would be, which clearly argues a remarkable foresight in the author, a feeling that a time would at length arrive when the power of science would be so far advanced, that men would be able to bridge over the terrible strait.
Widening horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of spray, and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite waters these were to be his portion and true home hereafter.
He talked in as round a tone, of honour and integrity, of veracity and virtue, as if his life were spotless, and his heart immaculate. The circumstances however that came out in the progress of the affair, were in the highest degree disadvantageous to him. The general indignation and hatred seemed gradually to swell against him, like the expansive surges of the ocean.
On Wednesday morning, the wind slackened a little, and they were able to shew a small bit of canvas; but towards night the storm again arose, and the waves ran so high that the ships were hardly able to live. The admiral endeavoured to carry a close-reefed mainsail, to bear his ship over the surges; but was at length forced to lay to, and to suffer his ship to drive astern before the wind.
We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad Visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received with the most lavish honors and applause.
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