THE BIG BLOW. 237 
old friend and half-a-dozen more of his old 
friends launched themselves again, this time 
edging sideways, backwards and forwards, like 
kites. Others followed, one after the other; 
and so, rising and falling, hanging and giving 
back, drifting, and tacking, and edging off and 
on, they began the battle to the shore. 
You could scarcely see them in the white 
mist of whirling snow; most of them could 
not see many of the others. They knew the 
direction, however, and, for the rest, were held 
together more or less by an occasional throaty 
call let out by an elder whenever he had a 
second to spare to think about it. A large 
part of the flock reached the shore at last, half- 
alive; and sank—blown like great pieces of 
burnt paper—here and there upon the snow, 
already piled high among the sandhills. 
Rest—absolute, prostrate, panting rest— 
was essential before they could get anywhere 
farther. They were thankful to have got off 
the estuary at all, over which they could 
already hear the tide rising with an angry 
mutter. Moreover, none of them seemed quite 
to know where they wanted to go. It was 
dry land here, and the sandhills kept the 
wind off—that was enough for some minutes, 
anyway. Some of them, the younger genera- 
tion, panting like strained motors, seemed to 
