RAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 323 



roadstead, some time in the latter days of the first Charles, 

 was one fine evening sitting alone on deck, awaiting the re- 

 turn of his seamen, who had gone ashore, and amusing him- 

 self in watching the lights that twinkled from the scattered 

 farm-houses, and in listening, in the extreme stillness of the 

 calm, to the distant lowing of cattle, or the abrupt bark of 

 the herdsman's dog. As the hour wore later, the sounds 

 ceased, and the lights disappeared, all but one solitary taper, 

 that twinkled from the window of the miller's cottage. At 

 length, however, it also disappeared, and all was dark around 

 the shores of the bay, as a belt of black velvet. Suddenly a 

 hissing noise was heard overhead ; the shipmaster looked up, 

 and saw what seemed to be one of those meteors known as 

 falling stars, slanting athwart the heavens in the direction of 

 the cottage, and increasing in size and brilliancy as it neared 

 the earth, until the wooded ridge and the shore could be seen 

 as distinctly from the ship-deck as by day. A dog howled 

 piteously from one of the outhouses, an owl whooped from 

 the wood. The meteor descended until it almost touched the 

 roof, when a cock crew from within ; its progress seemed in- 

 stantly arrested; it stood still, rose about the height of a 

 ship's mast, and then began again to descend. The cock crew 

 a second time ; it rose as before ; and, after mounting consi- 

 derably higher than at first, again sank in the line of the cot- 

 tage, to be again arrested by the crowing of the cock. It 

 mounted yet a third time, rising higher still ; and, in its last 

 descent, had almost touched the roof, when the faint clap of 

 wings was heard as if whispered over the water, followed by 

 a still louder note of defiance from the cock. The meteor 

 rose with a bound, and, continuing to ascend until it seemed 

 lost among the stars, did not again appear. Next night, how- 

 ever, at the same hour, the same scene was repeated in all its 

 circumstances : the meteor descended, the dog howled, the 

 owl whooped, the cock crew. On the following morning the 



