our of these smacks, cutter rigged, from ten
to twenty tons burden, I had seen lying at anchor one evening with an
American schooner under the gardens. In the night, the off-shore wind
rose into one of those short violent tropical storms which if they
lasted longer would be called hurricanes, but in these winter months are
soon over. It came on at midnight, and lasted for two hours. The noise
woke me, for the house shook, and the roar was like Niagara. It was too
dark, however, to see anything. The tempest died away at last, and I
slept till daybreak. My first thought on waking was for the smacks and
the schooner Had they sunk at their moorings? Had they broken loose, or
what had become of them? I got up and went down to the cliff to see. The
damage to the trees had been less than I expected. A few torn branches
lay on the lawn and the leaves were cast about, but the anchorage was
empty. Every vessel of every sort and size was gone. There was still a
moderate gale blowing. As the wind was off-shore the sea was tolerably
smooth for a mile or two, but outside the waves were breaking
violently, and the foam scuds were whirling off their crests. The
schooner was about four miles off, beating back under storm canvas,
making good weather of it and promising in a tack or two to recover the
moorings. The smacks, being less powerful vessels, had been driven
farther out to sea. Three of them I saw labouring heavily in the offing.
The fourth I thought at first had disappeared altogether, but finally I
made out a white speck on the horizon which I supposed to be the missing
cutter. One of the first three presently dropped away to leeward, and I
lost sight of her. The rest made their way back in good time. Towards
the afternoon when the wind had gone down the two that remained came in
after them, and before night they were all in their places again.

The gale had struck them at about midnight. Their cables had parted, and
they had been blown away to sea. The crews of the schooner and of three
of the cutters were all on board. They got their vessels under command,
and had been in no serious danger. In the fourth there was no one but a
small black boy of the island. He had been asleep, and woke to find
himself driving before the wind. In an hour or two he would have been
beyond the shelter of the land, and in the high seas which were then
running must have been inevitably swamped. The little fellow contrived
in the darkness--no one cou