The wind shrieked like a company of fiends around the tall tower. The sleet and spray slapped viciously against the shutterless windows on the exposed side of the structure. The woman shook her head.
"It's a terrible night, Tobias. Listen!"
From the ocean rose the voice of a blast seemingly worse than any that had gone before. It was the apex of the storm. It drowned anything further Tobias might have said.
The hurricane from the sea took the light tower in its arms and shook it. The roar of it made the woman's face blanch.
As the sound poured away into the distance the two in the kitchen heard a crash of glass—then a scream. Tobias dashed for the stairway door.
"The lamp!" he shouted.
"That ain't no lamp, Tobias," declared his sister.
When he opened the door a gale rushed in and sucked the flame out of the top of the lamp chimney with a "plop!" The stairway seemed filled with a whirling cyclone of wintry air.
Tobias heard the clatter of Ralph Endicott's boots on the iron treads coming down from above. A door was banging madly on the second floor. Lorna screamed again.
"The window of the best room's burst in, Tobias," shouted Miss Heppy. "That poor child!"