The horizon is lost in a grey mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is thunder over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem 'men like trees walking'. The fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers.

I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spy-glass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange ship.

'I can't make her out,' he said; 'she's a Russian, by the look of her; but she's moving about in the strangest way. She doesn't know her mind a bit; she seems to see the storm coming, but can't decide whether to run up north in the open sea, or to put in here.'

Vocabulary:

Vastness: A feeling of something very big
Presage: Prediction, an idea about the future
Shrouded: Wrapped around and covered
Ground swell: Waves getting bigger as they touch shore
Scuppers: Holes in a ship to let water run off the deck
Spy-glass: Telescope
Make her out: Understand her (ships are 'female' in English)
Put in: Come into harbour