They appeared twice as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling
whiteness and of no definite shape: though standing still they
had motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the
"visible heat"; at rest, they were seen now as separate
objects; then as one with the silver sparkle on the
sea; and when they rose and floated away they were no longer
shining and white, but like pale shadows of winged forms
faintly visible in the haze.
They were not birds but spirits--beings that lived in or were
passing through the world and now, like the heat, made
visible; and I, standing far out on the sparkling sands, with
the sparkling sea on one side and the line of dunes,
indistinctly seen as land, on the other, was one of them; and
if any person had looked at me from a distance he would have
seen me as a formless shining white being standing by the sea,
and then perhaps as a winged shadow floating in the haze. It
was only necessary to put out one's arms to float. That was
the effect on my mind: this natural world was changed to a
supernatural, and there was no more matter nor force in sea or
land nor in the heavens above, but only spirit.
Chapter Six: By Swallowfield
One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded country
near London I know lies between Reading and Basingstoke and
includes Aldermaston with its immemorial oaks in Berkshire and
Silchester with Pamber Forest in Hampshire.
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