wind seized on his hair, which
his mother kept rather long, as if he too was a part of the storm, and
some of its life went out from him. But so sheltered was he by North
Wind's arm and bosom that only at times, in the fiercer onslaught of
some curl-billowed eddy, did he recognise for a moment how wild was the
storm in which he was carried, nestling in its very core and formative
centre.

It seemed to Diamond likewise that they were motionless in this centre,
and that all the confusion and fighting went on around them. Flash after
flash illuminated the fierce chaos, revealing in varied yellow and blue
and grey and dusky red the vapourous contention; peal after peal of
thunder tore the infinite waste; but it seemed to Diamond that North
Wind and he were motionless, all but the hair. It was not so. They were
sweeping with the speed of the wind itself towards the sea.

CHAPTER VII. THE CATHEDRAL

I MUST not go on describing what cannot be described, for nothing is
more wearisome.

Before they reached the sea, Diamond felt North Wind's hair just
beginning to fall about him.

"Is the storm over, North Wind?" he called out.

"No, Diamond. I am only waiting a moment to set you down. You would not
like to see the ship sunk, and I am going to give you a place to stop in
till I come back for you."

"Oh! thank you," said Diamond. "I shall be sorry to leave you, North
Wind, but I would rather not see the ship go down. And I'm afraid the
poor people will cry, and I should hear them. Oh, dear!"

"There are a good many passengers on board; and to tell the truth,
Diamond, I don't care about your hearing the cry you speak of. I am
afraid you would not get it out of your little head again for a long
time."

"But how can you bear it then, North Wind? For I am sure you are kind. I
shall never doubt that again."

"I will tell you how I am able to bear it, Diamond: I am always hearing,
through every noise, through all the noise I am making myself even, the
sound of a far-off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it
means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it
were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in
which I make such a storm; but what I do hear is quite enough to make
me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you
could hear it."

"No, it wouldn't," returned Diamond, stoutly. "For they wouldn't hear
the music of the far-away so