FROM ACROSS THE SEAS. 
ERY cold it was, and very blustering. 
The short, snappy waves followed one 
another with endless racing persistence, going 
off from time to time in spurts of spray-like 
smoke, where the wind took them. Even 
above the trampling roar of the surf, you 
could hear the shriek of the nor’-easter as it 
hustled out to sea over the cliff-tops, straight 
from Arctic Russia. 
Then something else shot over the cliffs, 
and hustled out to sea too. This was not 
wind, but a bird ; a gray bird—it looked black 
against the sky—with a fawny, pinky breast. 
Nor was it alone. Others followed it—first 
one, then three, then twenty, then a hundred, 
then a thousand, then a—how do I know? 
Certainly there were very many birds, and the 
passing of them took a long time—all flying 
one way, all going out to sea, to sea. 
Yet they were not sea-birds, and if they 
persisted in their course, they would not put 
land beneath them again till they made the 
shores of Scotland, hundreds of miles due west 
across the lone North Sea. Moreover, they 
were all of the same kind—like as peas, one 
