they flew on past southampton and westward along towards weymouth , setting a leisurely pace ; the ferals resorting to wild acrobatics to entertain themselves , swooping to such heights as must have rendered them dizzy and ill , save for their former habituation among the most lofty mountains of the earth , and plummeting thence into absurd and dangerous diving maneuvers , so close they threw up spray as they skimmed up again from the waves .