50 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



continually increasing boldness to strike against the intruders in the 

 boat, but they bestow upon them stuff which does not exactly tend 

 to adorn faces and clothing. In the neighbourhood of the breeding- 

 place the excitement increases to an apparently distracted con- 

 fusion, the cries of individuals unite to form a maddening noise a 

 thousand times repeated. Before the boat has touched the land the 

 eider-drakes, who have been visiting their mates, have waddled to 

 the shore and are now swimming out to sea with a warning "Ahua- 

 ahua". The cormorants and mergansers follow them, but the 

 oyster-catchers, plovers, black guillemots, eider-ducks, gulls, and 

 terns, as well as the stone-chats and water-wagtails, cannot make 

 up their minds to forsake the island. Running birds innumerable 

 rush up and down the shore as if pursued by the evil one; the 

 black guillemots, which had glided up the slanting blocks of rock, 

 squat flat down upon them and stare in innocent wonder at the 

 strangers, and the eider-ducks prepare to make themselves invisible 

 after their fashion when the right moment comes. 



The boat touches the shore. We step upon the holm. A screech 

 rises from thousands of voices at once, the cloud of flying birds 

 thickens to opaqueness; hundreds of brooding gulls rise croaking to 

 join those in flight; dozens of oyster-catchers scream loudly, and 

 the maze of moving birds and the noise of their screeching become 

 so bewildering that one feels as if one perceived with the bodily 

 senses the din and riot of the witches' revel on the Blocksberg. 



" Voices o'er us dost thou hear? 

 Voices far, and voices near? 

 All the mountain-range along 

 Streams a raving Witches' Song.'' 



Mephisto's words are realized. The noise and tumult, the confusion 

 of forms and cries, fatigue all the senses; everything swims and 

 flickers before our eyes ; there is singing and ringing in our ears, 

 till at length we are conscious of neither colour nor noise, scarcely 

 even of the usually very penetrating odour. In whatever direction 

 we may turn the cloud covers the island ; nothing is to be seen but 

 birds, and when thousands alight to rest thousands more take wing, 

 their care and anxiety for their brood making them forget their 



