The
people in hundreds waited in their dull apartments for a lull,
and when it came they poured out like hungry sheep from the
fold, or like children from a school, swarming over the green
slope down to the beach, to scatter far and wide over the
sands. Then, in a little while; a new menacing blackness
would come up out of the sea, and by and by a fresh storm of
wind would send the people scuttling back into shelter. So it
went on day after day, and when night came the sound of the
ever-troubled sea grew louder, so that, shut up in our little
rooms in that back street, we had it in our ears, except at
intervals, when the wind howled loud enough to drown its great
voice, and hurled tempests of rain and hail against the roofs
and windows.
To me the most amazing thing was the spectacle of the swifts.
It was late for them, near the end of August; they should now
have been far away on their flight to Africa; yet here they
were, delaying on that desolate east coast in wind and wet,
more than a hundred of them. It was strange to see so many at
one spot, and I could only suppose that they had congregated
previous to migration at that unsuitable place, and were being
kept back by the late breeders, who had not yet been wrought
up to the point of abandoning their broods. They haunted a
vast ruinous old barn-like building near the front, which was
probably old a century before the town was built, and about
fifteen to twenty pairs had their nests under the eaves.
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