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THE BIRD WATCHER
as are proper to their shore life, amidst those strange new waters, from which others as constantly ascend. Gulls, too, and sometimes cormorants, may be there, whilst dove-cot pigeons, with familiar, yet now half phantasmal strut and bow, mingle occasionally, like little household Pucks, with the more poetic figures of this fairy dream. A dream, indeed, it is; but, more and more, it passes into one of far-off, sunnier lands—seen once, remembered now. Bluer becomes the sky—the sea; softer the air. Palm-trees wave, the long, bright breakers are bursting on a coral shore, the surf roars in, hissing and sparkling, the gulls are the surf-riders, England is no more.
