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The sole motion was the occasional drift of a vapour-like film of white powder, which the wind would lift like dust from the snowy carpet that covered the street, and wafting it along for a few yards, drop again to its repose, till another stronger gust, prelusive of the wind about to rise at sun-down, a wind cold and bitter as death would rush over the street, and raise a denser cloud of the white water-dust to sting the face of any improbable person who might meet it in its passage.
I love a smith's shop and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith. From Interlaken he went to the Falls of the Giessbach, on the pleasant lake of Brientz. And here we have him watching the shoot of the cataract down its series of precipices. It is shattered into foam at the base of each, and tossed by its own recoil as water-dust through the air.
And now, suppose that while these or any other kind of clouds are overhead, there comes along either a very cold wind, or a wind full of vapour. As it passes through the clouds, it makes them very full of water, for, if it chills them, it makes the water- dust draw more closely together; or, if it brings a new load of water-dust, the air is fuller than it can hold.
Then, if a cold wind comes sweeping along, high up in the sky, and chills this vapour, it forms into great bodies of water-dust clouds, and the sky is overcast. Such clouds form often on warm, still summer's day, and they are shaped like masses of wool, ending in a straight line below.
And through the jumble of my thoughts darted the sudden knowledge that there was a sea-fog outside a thing quite different from the nightly mists of the bay. It was rolling into the passage inexplicably, for no stir of air reached us. It was possible to watch its endless drift by the glow of the fire on the point, now much nearer us. Its edges seemed to melt away in the flight of the water-dust.
Another grand voice of nature is the thunder. People often have a vague idea that thunder is produced by the clouds knocking together, which is very absurd, if you remember that clouds are but water-dust. The most probable explanation of thunder is much more beautiful than this. You will remember from Lecture III that heat forces the air-atoms apart.
The boat seemed to be standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside, only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. "Throw me out, would you?
Haggart awakens, stretches himself and says, without opening his eyes: "Fire." "Here it is." "Something to drink." "Here it is! A fine wind, Noni. I looked out of the window, and the sea splashed into my eyes. It is high tide now and the water-dust flies up to the tower. I feel lonesome, Noni. I want to speak to you. Don't be angry!" "It's cold." "Soon the fire will burn better.
From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.
Because the vapour is chilled by coming out into the cold air, and its particles are drawn together again into tiny, tiny drops of water, to which Dr. Tyndall has given the suggestive name of water-dust. If you hold a plate over the steam you can catch these tiny drops, though they will run into one another almost as you are catching them.
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