A great black circle was revolving in the deep white sky of twilight above his head. In old pictures there are sometimes circles of this kind around the heads of saints. But in such cases they are golden against a dark ground; this circle was dark against a light ground. It was like the Great Douvre’s halo of darkness. The circle came closer to Gilliatt and then moved away, contracting and then enlarging. It was made up of a flock of seabirds—gulls, sea mews, frigate birds, cormorants—evidently excited and upset.
In 1843, Francis Bailey had published this account of a solar eclipse he had witnessed the previous year from Pavia, Italy:
"I was astounded by a tremendous burst of applause from the streets below, and at the same moment was electrified at the sight of one of the most brilliant and splendid phenomena that can well be imagined. For, at that instant the dark body of the moon was suddenly surrounded with a corona, or kind of bright glory, similar in shape and relative magnitude to that which painters draw round the heads of saints. . . . I had indeed anticipated the appearance of a luminous circle round the moon during the time of total obscurity: but I did not expect, from any of the accounts of preceding eclipses that I had read, to witness so magnificent an exhibition as that which took place."
