Overhead, ponderous, smoke-like storm-clouds; they huddled, they moved on like a herd of furious monsters ... and there below, another monster; a raging, yes, raging, sea ... The white foam gleamed with spasmodic fury, and surged up in hillocks upon it, and hurling up shaggy billows, it beat with a sullen roar against a huge cliff, black as pitch. The howling of the tempest, the chilling gasp of the storm-rocked abyss, the weighty splash of the breakers, in which from time to time one fancied something like a wail, like distant cannon-shots, like a bell ringing--the tearing crunch and grind of the shingle on the beach, the sudden shriek of an unseen gull, on the murky horizon the disabled hulk of a ship--on every side death, death and horror.... Giddiness overcame me, and I shut my eyes again with a sinking heart.... ‘What is this? Where are we?’ ‘On the south coast of the Isle of Wight opposite the Blackgang cliff where ships are so often wrecked,’ said Alice, speaking this time with peculiar distinctness, and as it seemed to me with a certain malignant pleasure.... ‘Take me away, away from here ... home! home!’ I shrank up, hid my face in my hands ... I felt that we were moving faster than before; the wind now was not roaring or moaning, it whistled in my hair, in my clothes ... I caught my breath ... ‘Stand on your feet now,’ I heard Alice’s voice saying. I tried to master myself, to regain consciousness ... I felt the earth under the soles of my feet, and I heard nothing, as though everything had swooned away about me ... only in my temples the blood throbbed irregularly, and my head was still giddy with a faint ringing in my ears. I drew myself up and opened my eyes. X We were on the bank of my pond. Straight before me there were glimpses through the pointed leaves of the willows of its broad surface with threads of fluffy mist clinging here and there upon it. To the right a field of rye shone dimly; on the left stood up my orchard trees, tall, rigid, drenched it seemed in dew ... The breath of the morning was already upon them. Across the pure grey sky stretched like streaks of smoke, two or three slanting clouds; they had a yellowish tinge, the first faint glow of dawn fell on them; one could not say whence it came; the eye could not detect on the horizon, which was gradually growing lighter, the spot where the sun was to rise. The stars had disappeared; nothing was astir yet, though everything was already on the point of awakening in the enchanted stillness of the morning twilight. ‘Morning! see, it is morning!’ cried Alice in my ear. ‘Farewell till to-morrow.’