Calais, 27 May
No one can ever have taken a short voyage or a long one in calm weather without being charmed by the gulls following the ship. We had not more than a dozen with us as we came over from Dover to-day, but they were quite unlike any other gulls I have ever seen. Not that they were of a rare species – quite the reverse; but what kind of gull they were was not important. Something had happened to these particular birds. They were translucent. Light seemed to pass through them and to shine from them, and as in their oscillations they flew from east to west of us they showed pure white, while as they flew from west to east they were suffused with the palest vestige of pale yellow, and became the colour of the last meltings of a lemon ice.
Country diary: the cackling, chip-stealing lords of misrule
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What produced this exquisite miracle I could not say, though I made a guess at the time. But the reflection forced itself upon me that these perfectly appointed, wraith-like, spotless beings were the scavengers of the sea. We lost them halfway across when the stewards threw out our potato peelings. Fresh from Chatham and the south London suburbs, one wondered how long it would take man to learn from nature how to clear up messes.