236 THE BIG BLOW. 
each other, till at length black forms began to 
merge in upon him out of the whirling white 
snow-fog. 
There was urgent need to quit. The tide 
was rising, and to stay out on the estuary in 
that inferno was to risk many sorts of un- 
pleasant death; but it was no fool’s game 
even to get the flock together to begin with. 
At last, however, the company was com- 
plete, or sounded to be—anything like accurate 
seeing was out of the question; and they 
started—in the teeth of that father of all the 
winds. 
When our old rook let go of the mud, he 
hung in the air, facing the wind, with wings 
flapping at full power, and he never made 
headway an inch. Then, after a bit, he came 
down again. This was awful. We may put 
the wind at, say, about forty miles an hour, at 
least, not to mention the blinding snow. It 
was a blizzard, no less, as cold as could be, and 
he and the flock were by no means well fed ; 
indeed, they were still hungry. Their chances 
of seeing next dawn had, like the thermo- 
meter, gone down to zero. 
There was silence and stillness for a moment 
or two after that false start, while the wind 
nearly blew them over where they stood, and 
even the mud began to turn white. Then our 
