Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/104

 down through the cracks with a strange hollow sound and sweeping the sea-weeds wildly up and down. The wind sounded as on a mountain-top, a curious mixture of high-pitched whistling and bass droning. Occasionally it would rise into a terrific scream, making the waves rage with the uncanny storm-green. At the crisis of the storm Eepersip, who had been standing on the beach watching, her curls flying, her ferns fluttering and often tearing loose, flung herself into the storm from a high rock, and was swept about like a tiny insect, disappearing under a wave, bobbing up to take a breath just as the next breaker washed over her. She had a glorious time out in the waves and the spray. The sea-gulls shrieked; sometimes they struck at a fish, and appeared all covered with spray and shaking the drops from their wingsstrong narrow wings that beat down the air as the birds rose again, to hover and swoop and plunge. These marvellous birds being blown wildly in the gale reminded Eepersip of the swallows, as they were tossed about by the high pasture windsthe swallows she had loved so when she lived on the meadow.

Slowly the wind abated its fury, and Eepersip, covered with water-drops and spray like a silver fish or a sea-gull, swam to the shore bubbling with