Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet,
and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What
astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even,
and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the
ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly every
sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they,
too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered
by weariness and grief, and then by death.
By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through
great sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of
brine, I entered the first of the gullies: a narrow, long, winding one,
with sides polished by the sea-wash, and the floor rising inwards. In
the dark interior I struck matches, able still to hear from outside the
ponderous spasmodic rush and jostle of the sea between the crags of the
reef, but now quite faintly. Here, I knew, I could meet only dead men,
but urged by some curiosity, I searched to the end, wading in the middle
through a three-feet depth of sea-weed twine: but there was no one; and
only belemnites and fossils in the chalk.
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