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in the meanwhile the gap was bridged by a coach service. From four miles
of embankment the ballast had been sapped away, and the sleepers and
rails collapsing into the void presented a dismal picture of wreck.

Yes, we suffered one other privation. It was long before our football-
field rose again from the deeps, and was dry enough for play. Its
goalposts pricking up mournfully through the floods were a landmark which
the boys recognised with rueful eyes in the midst of the drowned and
deformed landscape.

More substantial measures than the patching up of the barricades in which
we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll
of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression
which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older residents
remember a coach-road under the promontory, where now there is nothing
but rock and seaweed, and look forward gloomily to a day when Borth will
be "disturbed;" for so they euphemistically describe the catastrophe
which is finally to wash it away. But an acquaintance of ours, who
claims one of the longest memories in the place, is more confident. He
has known Borth seventy years and as he has never seen it destroyed
during all that time, does not think it will be now. His own house is
safe on the hill of Old Borth, so he judges with all the calm of
conscious security. His conviction, however, is not shared by his
townsfolk, who were soon busy holding meetings, and considering schemes
for the provision of something better than these moral guarantees.
Heartily do we hope that funds and measures will be found to save our
friends from another and more calamitous "disturbance." But a letter
from Borth, a year later, speaks of the sea as again threatening their
security. "We are not afraid of him, though," the correspondent, one of
our landladies, devoutly adds, "for he is under a Master." All the same,
we should like to hear of a stout sea-wall as well.

Once again the elements caused us alarm. A heavy gale got up in the
evening of February 19th, and roared all night upon the roof of the
hotel, tearing up the fluttering tiles in patches, and sending them
adrift through the air, till the master who slept under the leads, in
charge of the top storey, began to doubt whether the straining roof would
last overhead till morning. It was small consolation that this time he
and his neighbours should at least "die a dry death,