102 



TRIUMPH OF THE WING. 



What are they but air, sea, the elements, which have taken wing 

 and fly ? I know nothing of it. To see their gray eye, stern and 

 cold (never successfully imitated in our museums), is to see the gray, 

 indifferent sea of the north in all its icy impassiveness. What do I 

 say ? That sea exhibits more emotion. At times phosphorescent 

 and electrical, it will rise into strong animation. Old Father Ocean, 

 saturnine and passionate, often revolves, under his pale countenance, 

 a host of thoughts. His sons, the goelands, have less of animal lifr 



than he has. They fly, with their dead eyes seeking some dead prey ; 

 and in congregated flocks they expedite the destruction of the great 

 carcasses which float upon the sea for their behoof. Not ferocious in 

 aspect, amusing the voyager by their sports, by frequent glimpses of 

 their snowy pinions, they speak to him of remote lands, of the shores 

 which he leaves behind or is about to visit, of absent or hoped-for 

 friends. And they are useful to him, also, by announcing and pre- 

 dicting the coming storm. Ofttimes their sail expanded warns him 

 to furl his own. 



For do not suppose that when the tempest breaks they deign to 

 fold their wings. Far from this : it is then that they set forth. The 

 storm is their harvest time ; the more terrible the sea, so much the 

 less easily can the fish escape from these daring fishers. In the Bay 

 of Biscay, where the ocean-swell, driven from the north-west, after 



