Still the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized upon her sight.

The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless sea-birds.

From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.
It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour in fear and consternation.

And when she returned to her father, she told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea, and fought in the air and killed each other.

"And see!" she cried; "look at this, and this, and this!" Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the devilish warfare that she had witnessed and "This," said he, lifting one of them, "is a sea-bird's feather; and this," lifting another, "is a sea-bird's egg; and this," lifting the third, "is a dead sea-bird itself." Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.
"Ah yes," she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile, "they are only that after all." And then she said very quietly, as if speaking to herself, "What a long time it is before you learn to see!" It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took shapes of supernatural horror or splendour.