size when riding the crest of the breakers, smaller
and partially lost to sight when buried at intervals in the trough of
the sea.

A ship was drifting helplessly, entirely at the mercy of the elements,
and must soon be cast upon the beach at our feet. Approaching swiftly as
she was, in the heavy sea, as the violence of the wind bore her onward,
lights appeared as signals of distress, telling of souls on board in
fearful danger.

In dismay we watched the helpless, on-coming vessel. We were in direct
line of her path as she was now drifting. If by chance the mountain of
water should, by an awful upheaval, rear the wreck upon its crest at
landing, we would be engulfed in a moment of time. No power could save
the buildings which would be instantly shivered to heaps of floating
debris.

Should we flee for our lives? Or would the wind, quickly, by some
miracle, change its course, and thereby send the menacing vessel to one
side of us or the other? Groups of patrolmen and soldiers everywhere
watched with anxious eyes, and friends stood with us to encourage and
assist if needed.

God alone could avert the awful, impending disaster. He could do so, and
did.

When only a few hundred feet from shore, the huge black mass, rearing
and tossing like a thing of life in the raging sea, swerved to the west
by a sudden veer of the wind, and then, amid the roar of breakers angry
to ferocity, she, with a boom as of cannon in battle, plunged into the
sands of the beach only a hundred and fifty feet away.

The earth trembled. With one long, quivering motion, like some dumb
brute in its death struggle, the ship settled, its great timbers parting
as it did so, and the floods pouring clean over its decks. Then began
the work of rescuing those on board, which was finally, after many
hours, successfully accomplished.

CHAPTER XII.

BAR-ROOM DISTURBANCES.

"Girls, O girls!" shouted Mary from the kitchen door in order to be
heard above the waters, "Do come inside!" Then, as we answered her call
and closed the door behind us, she said: "The danger is over now, and
you can't help those poor people in the wreck. There are plenty of men
to do that. See! it is nearly midnight, and we shall have another hard
day's work tomorrow. Go to bed like good children, do."

"How about yourself, ma?" said Ricka, carrying out the farce of mother
and children as we often did, Mary being the eldest of the four.

"I'm going too, as soon as I get