As the plane wheeled, lifted its nose, climbed, wheeled, and lifted in enormous roaring circles, the earth wheeled slowly beyond the side. The checkered green, the crowded glistening roof tops of Miami, stretching west to a mist of Everglades and sky, wheeled also. The blue bay floor wheeled, which was at this height bright turquoise, streaked with lime green, which whitened lightly on each side of the lean elbow of the causeway, where cars slid like beetles. Beyond Ronny’s right bathtub rim circled the straight lines of trees and streets that were Miami Beach; the apron patches of green that were golf links; the small squares that were hotel roofs, house roofs, patches and rectangles of colour flattened on the ground. Then, as they climbed higher and the plane lurched a little, heading into the vast sea wind, there before them, dim through the windshield, reaching out tremendously to right hand and to left, lay the ocean, a vast lavender miracle, wrinkling a little and reaching out, reaching out so enormously to the stretched horizon that it seemed to rise to meet it, to melt into it, and mingle in, the distance all one smoking, imperceptible blue. High and far above it, yet somehow not remote, because there was nothing with which to measure the distance between, the plane snored straight eastward now upon the crystal level of its pathway, rocking a little upon its invisible cradling of air, strangely real, strangely prosaic, a thing of wood and metal, weighty, hard to the touch, solid to rest upon, commonplace in a world gone wonderful with high magic, all blue air and bluer unbelievable sea.