CHAPTER II 

 WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 



FICKLE WINTER 



WINTER is ushered in on Breydon often long 

 before dreary November has counted up thirty 

 gloomy days. It sometimes steals upon us in 

 the dull, lifeless fog, shortening the already fleeting days, 

 making the damp nights hideous, and the silence oppressive 

 and mournful, as the occasional clangour of the Bell buoy, far 

 out in the roadstead, reverberates across dark dancing wave 

 and maram-clad sand-dune. And the solitary wildfowler, 

 moored in his snug little houseboat in a sheltered creek in the 

 saltings, taking a last look around him, seeing nothing, and 

 hearing only the clamour of a parcel of wigeon busy on the 

 "grass" at supper-time, and the bleat of the lightship fog- 

 horn, slams to his cabin-door, puts a bit more coal on the 

 fire, and thanks his lucky stars that he is not among those 

 away yonder manning the " ships that pass in the night." 



Now and again grim winter bursts upon us with gale and 

 flood, churning up the tide as it forces its way up against the 

 wild north-wester, until the muddy waves roll across the flats 

 in dirty, foam-tipped lines, that spend their fury on each other 

 in the channel, or beat up fitfully and broken in a baffled 

 melee upon the sturdy flint walls, tossing up with their last 

 futile effort the wreckage of the torn Zostera, and the flotsam 

 that quieter tides bore upstream and deposited among it. 

 Sometimes the storm breaks adrift the huge rafts of timber, 

 and flings big balks disdainfully with the lighter flotsam ; 

 and the wild sea-bird, ill at ease on land or sea, tosses wildly 

 above head, finding no rest for the sole of her foot on the 

 submerged mudflats, and wearied with her fishing in the 

 hollows of the sea waves. 



12 



