“I should not have come,” said Alice, turning shuddering, away from the beach.
“Yes, you should!” replied Miss Joe; “and now you should come back! Hurry! hurry! hurry! Look at that mass of black cloud rushing like a demon up the sky!”
It was now very dark, and they hastened on toward the house. They reached it as a furious blast of wind drove them against its walls. They went in the house. Shutters were closed, props were placed against the doors to assist the old locks in holding them against the fury of the storm. And as the room was now pitch dark, except by the lurid light of the smoldering fire, Miss Joe lit a candle and set it on the mantelpiece. Alice sat down in the chimney-corner armchair, very pale.
The storm raged, shrieked and howled around the house. Hourly its violence increased; tenfold the crash of falling trees, twisted off at the roots, the clatter of rattling tiles and shingles, reft off and rained down from the roof; the scream of the frightened water-fowl, the howl of the alarmed cattle, mingled with the shriek of the wind and the thunder of the waves in the grand diapason of nature’s wildest, most terrific harmony.
At last came the awful crisis of the storm. The wind had
“Paused to gather its fearful breath.”
and now rushed upon the house with the invincible power of a storming battery, with a sound, a shock, as if two planets had met in fatal concussion. The earth trembled; the massive roof of the strong house was torn off and hurled aloft; heavy blocks of sandstone came clattering down from the topmost wall, and then the rain fell its vast sheets, as if “all heaven was opened.” And now came a sound more terrific than that of an advancing army!
The ocean was upon them in its might!
Speechless with awe, like those in the immediate presence of sudden death, Alice and Miss Joe remained locked in each other’s arms. The old negro ran wildly about, like one perfectly distracted, screaming:
“Oh, my God! my God! we shall be all drowned in this very house, like blind puppies in a tub! Oh, will nobody ’fess me o’ my sins? Oh, Lord! I ’fess to de breaking o’ all de ’mandments, rather dan miss absolushum for dem as I has broke!”