A GIFT OF GOD 13 



or seeming kinship, with the air, otherwise appear 

 to me not more in one gull than in another, and the 

 style of motion identical. 



Into the bosom of the wind a stream of gulls, large 

 and small, continuous perhaps for several minutes, 

 come across the tongue of land between the sea 

 and its salt-scented pool up the estuary. Here, at 

 the cliff, they meet the full force of the raving north 

 wind, against which the starlings cannot prevail at 

 least, when starlings strive twenty times in the day 

 to fly into it, I notice them buffeted back, as are the 

 cliff-bred daws. Yet a stroke or two, and the gull 

 shoots itself clean into the wind at this point, and 

 rides there without the least sign of muscular strain ! 

 It can advance leisurely for some little way in the 

 teeth of this wind without a full flap of the wings. 

 What distance it can travel without resorting again 

 to obvious and ordinary effort I cannot determine; 

 it may be fifty yards ; it may be a hundred ; precise 

 measurement would be hard. Yet the impetus which 

 the gull puts forth to shoot into the gale, and glide 

 so many yards through it, is far from violent ; a lazy- 

 seeming half flap or two serves the purpose. I notice 

 nothing like the full flap which the wood-pigeon gives 

 on starting in hot haste from the oak tree, a flap so 

 impetuous that the wings smack each other smartly 

 above the bird, and cause a loud sound. 



But travelling across the wind often more against 

 than with the gull can go forward hundreds of yards 



