comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and never
so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view
that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein for
cheerful labour.

*

The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as
dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight
alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was
impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the
flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of
a man's nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead
like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on
Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the
distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross the wind must
have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw.
Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces.
All round the isle of Aros, the surf, with an incessant,
hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now
louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of
sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all
this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the
Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At
that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of the name
that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost
mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night;
or if not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous