evening. And once on the beach, the
sea has little mercy, for the water is deep right in, and the waves
curl over full on the pebbles with a weight no timbers can withstand.
Then if poor fellows try to save themselves, there is a deadly
under-tow or rush back of the water, which sucks them off their legs,
and carries them again under the thundering waves. It is that back-suck
of the pebbles that you may hear for miles inland, even at Dorchester,
on still nights long after the winds that caused it have sunk, and
which makes people turn in their beds, and thank God they are not
fighting with the sea on Moonfleet beach.

But on this third of November there was no wreck, only such a wind as I
have never known before, and only once since. All night long the tempest
grew fiercer, and I think no one in Moonfleet went to bed; for there was
such a breaking of tiles and glass, such a banging of doon and rattling
of shutters, that no sleep was possible, and we were afraid besides lest
the chimneys should fall and crush us. The wind blew fiercest about five
in the morning, and then some ran up the street calling out a new
danger--that the sea was breaking over the beach, and that all the place
was like to be flooded. Some of the women were for flitting forthwith and
climbing the down; but Master Ratsey, who was going round with others to
comfort people, soon showed us that the upper part of the village stood
so high, that if the water was to get thither, there was no knowing if it
would not cover Ridgedown itself. But what with its being a spring-tide,
and the sea breaking clean over the great outer beach of pebbles--a thing
that had not happened for fifty years--there was so much water piled up
in the lagoon, that it passed its bounds and flooded all the sea meadows,
and even the lower end of the street. So when day broke, there was the
churchyard flooded, though 'twas on rising ground, and the church itself
standing up like a steep little island, and the water over the door-sill
of the Why Not?, though Elzevir Block would not budge, saying he did not
care if the sea swept him away. It was but a nine-hours' wonder, for the
wind fell very suddenly; the water began to go back, the sun shone
bright, and before noon people came out to the doors to see the floods
and talk over the storm. Most said that never had been so fierce a wind,
but some of the oldest spoke of one in the second year of Queen Anne, and
would have it as bad or wors