116 STUDIES OF NATURE 



awful ; hanging in the sky, or brooding over the 

 water. It seems to be so clearly detached from 

 the sea that we need to be told again and again 

 that it is really Ailsa at which we are gazing. 

 The truth is, I suppose, that the dark plain of 

 the sea is not distinguishable from the equally 

 dark arch of the sky. 



Six o'clock in the morning : and I am taking 

 my first turn upon deck. We are passing the 

 Isle of Man. How cold it looks how grey and 

 misty and cheerless ! We are near enough to 

 see the waves flinging themselves on the rocks, 

 and falling hopelessly back again into the gulf 

 from which they hoped to rise. Item : Sleep 

 no more in these cabin berths. The stifling 

 atmosphere brings nightmare. Once I had the 

 whole incumbency of Ailsa upon me. When I 

 woke and looked round, my fellow sleepers 

 seemed for all the world like dead men on the 

 shelves of a mausoleum. When one of them 

 lifts up his head with a mechanical motion, like 



