There was no gale, no moving zephyrs, nothing but a vast quietude of air.
"What is it ?" I gasped, out of equilibrium from the abrupt cessation of wind.
"The shift," he said.

"There she comes." And it came, from the north-west, a blast of wind, a blow, an atmospheric impact that bewildered and stunned and again made the _Elsinore_ harp protest.

It forced me down on the rail.

I was like a windle-straw.

As I faced this new abruptness of gale it drove the air back into my lungs, so that I suffocated and turned my head aside to breathe in the lee of the draught.