‘Yes.’
‘I’m a long distance indeed from home!’
‘Distance is not for us.’
‘Really?’ I was fired by a sudden recklessness. ‘Then take me to South America!
‘To America I cannot. It’s daylight there by now.’ ‘And we are night-birds. Well, anywhere, where you can, only far, far away.’
‘Shut your eyes and hold your breath,’ answered Alice, and we flew along with the speed of a whirlwind. With a deafening noise the air rushed into my ears. We stopped, but the noise did not cease. On the contrary, it changed into a sort of menacing roar, the roll of thunder...
‘Now you can open your eyes,’ said Alice.
IX
I obeyed ... Good God, where was I?
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....