THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 65 



walk ended at Ipswich Light, a small beacon 

 placed on the edge of the dunes as a warning 

 against their treacherous sands. A bit of land 

 near it had been reclaimed from the desert 

 and gave promise of being a garden in a few 

 weeks. The rain was at its fiercest here, and beat 

 upon the lighthouse as though it would wash it 

 from the face of the earth. As the wind blew 

 the sand grass, its long blades whirled around, 

 cutting circles in the sand with their tough tips 

 and edges. These circles could be seen from a 

 long distance, so deeply and clearly were they 

 cut. Sometimes a long blade and a short one 

 whirled on the same root and made concentric 

 circles. The geometrical correctness of these 

 figures made them striking elements in a land- 

 scape so chaotic as the dunes in the Equinoctial. 



Scattered about over the sand were small 

 star-shaped objects about the size of a silver 

 dollar, and brown in color. They looked at 

 first glance as though they might have been 

 stamped out of thick leather. Whether they 

 were fish, flesh, or plant, was a question not 

 readily answered by a novice. They proved to 

 be a kind of puff-ball, common in such regions as 

 the dunes, and singularly well adapted to life on 

 shifting sands. 



Through the long night of the 21st the wind 

 wailed around the house, and the sound of the 



