The fury, height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not recounted.

High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave.

And yet the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force.

Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar--a gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument.
I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness of the night.

He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown back and the bottle to his mouth.