f hills, like a fortress set
against invading ocean,--and straight away before his eyes ocean itself
rose and fell in a chaos of billowy blackness. What a sight it was!
Here, from this point, he could take some measure and form some idea of
the storm, which so far from abating as he had imagined it might, when
passing through the protected seclusion of the valley he had just left,
was evidently gathering itself together for a still fiercer onslaught.

Breathless with his climbing exertions he stood watching the huge walls
of water, built up almost solidly as it seemed, by one force and dashed
down again by another,--it was as though great mountains lifted
themselves over each other to peer at the sky and were driven back again
to shapelessness and destruction. The spectacle was all the more grand
and impressive to him, because where he now was he could not hear the
full clamour of the rolling and retreating billows. The thunder of the
surf was diminished to a sullen moan, which came along with the wind and
clung to it like a concordant note in music, forming one sustained chord
of wrath and desolation. Darkening steadily over the sea and densely
over-spreading the whole sky, there were flying clouds of singular
shape,--clouds tossed up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque
human figures with threatening arms outstretched,--anon, to the filmly
outlines of fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings and
ravenous beaks,--or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as
though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in
mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two
or three soared right over Helmsley's head with a plaintive cry. He
turned to watch their graceful flight, and saw another phalanx of clouds
coming up behind to meet and cope with those already hurrying in with
the wind from the sea. The darkness of the sky was deepening every
minute, and he began to feel a little uneasy. He realised that he had
lost his way, and he looked on all sides for some glimpse of a main
road, but could see none, and the path he had followed evidently
terminated at the summit where he stood. To return to the valley he had
left seemed futile, as it was only a way back to Minehead, which place
he wished to avoid. There was a small sheep track winding down on the
other side of the hill, and he thought it possible that this might lead
to a farm-road, which again might take him out on so