CHAPTER I 8 red moreen curtain nearly close , I was shrined in double retirement .
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand ; to the left were the clear panes of glass , protecting , but not separating me from the drear November day . At intervals , while turning over the leaves of my book , I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon . Afar , it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud ; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub , with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast .
I returned to my book -- Bewick ' s History of British Birds : the letterpress thereof I cared little for , generally speaking ; and yet there were certain introductory pages that , child as I was , I could not pass quite as a blank . They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl ; of " the solitary rocks and promontories " by them only inhabited ; of the coast of Norway , studded with isles from its southern extremity , the Lindeness , or Naze , to the North Cape -
" Where the Northern Ocean , in vast whirls , Boils round the naked , melancholy isles Of farthest Thule ; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides ."
Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland , Siberia , Spitzbergen , Nova Zembla , Iceland , Greenland , with " the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone , and those forlorn regions of dreary space , -- that reservoir of frost and snow , where firm fields of ice , the accumulation of centuries of winters , glazed in Alpine heights above heights , surround the pole , and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold ." Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own : shadowy , like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children ' s brains , but strangely impressive . The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes , and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray ; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast ; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking .