Some, that had been more adventurous, and set forth during the night, notwithstanding the warning elements, met the fate their more prudent comrades averted; and Peter came in, to take away the almost untasted breakfast, with the melancholy tidings, that the wreck of several boats had been dashed on shore.
Mr. Athelstone anticipated a sad summons from many a bereft family in his flock; and his own anxious fears for the yacht that carried his beloved nephew, unfolding to him what were the apprehensions in every breast around him, he gently reproved the old man, for bringing in the reports of the hour, to wound the tender spirits of invalids; and glancing at Marcella, who had turned her death-like face away, he piously ejaculated:
"But, the Lord makes darkness his secret place! His pavilion round about him is dark water, and thick clouds cover him. But at the brightness of his presence, the clouds shall be removed, and he shall take them who trust in him, out of many waters!"
Cornelia rose from her seat, and withdrew. And when the encrease of the storm became too intolerable for Marcella to endure with any apparent tranquillity, she too, left the Abbot's chair, and putting her unsteady hand upon the arm of her mother, hardly sustained herself out of the room.
The sky was red on the horizon, as if dyed in blood, and the lurid clouds, tumbling over each other, like an upward sea of molten fire, roared in the blast, amid the thundering of the waves below, which dashed their boiling surges in mountainous and foaming heaps, against the stupendous cliffs of the opposite shore.
Mr. Athelstone and Ferdinand were both on different parts of the rock, each with his telescope in his hand, looking afar for the only object which now possessed their thought. But a furious tornado of sleet and rain, accompanied with thunder and lightning, and a darkness at noon-day, black as midnight, shrouded them at once; and the re-doubling tempest which burst forth above and beneath, seemed to shake the old rocks of Lindisfarne to their foundations.
At the fearful concussion, which appeared to the inhabitants of the Pastorage, like the awful summons on the judgment-day, Marcella threw herself on the bosom of her mother, and murmured, "Louis!" till her swooning voice was heard no more.
Cornelia was alone, and fell from her knees, prostrate on the floor. She was found in that position, and insensible as her friend, when Alice ran into the room in the agony of her fears; and her screams brought their terrified mother into the same apartment.
Mr. Athelstone's look-out of utter hopelessness, was succeeded by the now doubly afflicting duty of visiting and consoling the widows and the orphans, which the present horrors had rendered dependent on his spiritual comfort. More than one drowned body was carried before him, into the sorrowing cottage which had once been its home; and, after he had soothed the wretched inhabitants with "the hope which is to come;" he took his way to the Parsonage, to prepare his own family for the dreadful catastrophe to its happiness, which, he did not doubt that night, or the next morning, would unfold.
Ferdinand would not relinquish his more cheering expectations, till despair should appear before him, in the lifeless bodies of his friends.