A circle of grey 2

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The possible references from Hearn's Last Island are, however, quite different from those from Bigney's Last Island. In fact, we find (again with the previously quoted lines in grey) that what could make a circle of grey is a flock of birds:

The gulls fly lower about you, circling with sinister squeaking cries; — perhaps for an instant your feet touch in the deep something heavy, swift, lithe, that rushes past with a swirling shock. Then the fear of the Abyss, the vast and voiceless Nightmare of the Sea, will come upon you; the silent panic of all those opaline millions that flee glimmering by will enter into you also. …

She learned where the sea-birds, with white bosoms and brown wings, made their hidden nests of sand, — and where the cranes waded for their prey, — and where the beautiful wild-ducks, plumaged in satiny lilac and silken green, found their food, — and where the best reeds grew to furnish stems for Feliu’s red-clay pipe, — and where the ruddy sea-beans were most often tossed upon the shore, — and how the gray pelicans fished all together, like men — moving in far-extending: semicircles, beating the flood with their wings to drive the fish before them.

— Lafcadio Hearn, Chita: A Memory of Last Island

The whole strophe was missing from the lyrics published by Malcolm Jones in 1982, and in 1988 Bryan Morrison, who had administered Syd's publishing, was unable to provide any lyrics to Luca Ferrari, and the pioneering biographer had to rely on a transcription by ear provided by fanzine editor Bernard White, with the line "Crisp black squeaks tore reefs". Perhaps, just to fit better with the Hearn excerpt, an American pronunciation of the word "flocks" would sound good combined with the meaning of the adjective "crisp" sometimes used, if anything, for lively people, rather than for a flock of birds.

sources →
Hearn, Lafcadio. Chita: A Memory of Last Island. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889. 26, 145-146. Print. http://www.archive.org/stream/chitamemoryoflas00hearuoft#page/26/mode/2up [#page/144/mode/2up]