And there came a storm such as had not raged along this coast--which yet throughout the year heard many a fierce gale sweep over its low beach of sand and chalk--within the memory of man.
It was about midnight, when I was awakened by a crashing as of thunder, making the old house quiver to its foundations, and followed by a rattling and clattering of falling tiles, and of slamming doors and shutters, like the crackle of musketry following the heavy discharge of a battery.
This was the storm that had so long been announcing its coming. My first thought was of those in the house in the garden. With a single bound I was out of my bed and dressed, as the sergeant thrust his gray head in at my door.
"Already up?" said he; "but this is enough to rouse a bear with seven senses. He will be awake, too."
The old man did not say who would be awake; between us two it was not necessary.
"I was just going to him," I said.
"Right," said the old man. "I will stay here the while. Somebody will be needed here who has his head on his shoulders. It is a most diabolical state of things; worse than eight years ago; and then the men would not be kept in their dormitories. A little more and we should have had murder done."
During this brief conversation, the tremendous shocks had been twice repeated, and, if possible, with still greater violence. Add to this a howling and an uproar--we had to speak almost in a shout to make ourselves heard. This was in the room--what must it then be outside?
This I learned a minute later, as I crossed the prison court. A pitchy darkness lay like a thick black pall over the earth; not a star, not the faintest gleam of light. The hurricane raged between the high walls like a beast of prey that finds himself for the first time in a cage. Despite my strength and the momentum of my heavy frame, I had to struggle with the monster that flung me this way and that. Thus I fought my way through the thick darkness, among the tiles that came clattering from the roofs, to the superintendent's house, out of the windows of which here and there a light was visible.
In the lower hall I met Paula. She was carrying a lighted taper in her hand, and its light fell upon her pale face and large eyes, which filled with tears as she saw me.