e with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the
people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair,
making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering
along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with
flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and
holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw,
not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind
buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look
away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag
back.

Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away
in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think
might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.
Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they
looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners,
excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older
faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their
glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were
surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at
it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand,
and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came
rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if
the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a
hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its
purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows
thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the
land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full
might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another
monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys
(with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted
up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming
sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change
its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal
shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the
clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending a