s.

Hush! All at once came the storm, not, as in northern latitudes, with
premonitory murmur and fretting, lashing itself by slow degrees into
white heat and rain, but the storm of the tropics, carrying the sea
on its broad, angry shoulders, till, reaching the verdurous,
love-clustered little isle, it flung the bulk of waters with all its
huge, brawny force right upon the cut-paper prettinesses, and broke
them into sand and splinters. Of all those pretty children with blue
and with opalescent eyes, arrayed like flowers of the field; of all
those lovers dreaming of love in summer dalliance, and of cottages
among figs and olives; of all the vigorous manhood and ripe
womanhood, with all the skill and courage of successful life in
them,--not a tithe was saved. The ghastly maw of the waters covered
them and swallowed them. A few sprang, among crashing timbers, on a
floor laden with impetuous water--the many perhaps never waked at
all, or woke to but one short prayer. The few who were saved hardly
knew how they were saved--the many who died never knew how they were
slain or drowned.

It has twice been my fortune in life to see such a storm, and to know
its sudden destruction: once, to see a low, broad, shelving farm-house
disappear to the ground timbers before my eyes, as if its substance
had vanished into air, while great globes of electric fire burst down
and sunk into the ground; once, to see a pine forest of centuries'
growth cut down as grass by the mower's scythe. I do not think it
possible to see a third and survive, and I do not wish my soul to be
whirled away in the vortex of such a storm.

At noon or later, after the ruin of Last Island, a gentleman of a name
renowned in South-western story found himself clinging to a bush in
the wild waters, lashed by the long whips of branches, half dead
with fatigue and fear. For a time the hurly-burly blinded and hid
everything, and the long roll rocked and tore at him in desperate
endeavor to wrench loose his bleeding fingers. The impulse of the wind
and storm at such a time is as of a solid body, and there is a look
of solidity in the very appearance of the magnificent force. But as
it abated he thought he heard a faint cry, and looking around he saw a
poor girl in the ribbons of her night-dress clinging to a branch, and
slipping from her feeble hold. Tired as he was, and wild and dangerous
as the attempt might be, he did not dare to leave her to perish.
Choosing his time