"Is it you, Erik?" said the teacher. "I am glad to see you, and make
sure that you are not on the sea. I was just going to inquire. The
barometer has fallen with such rapidity during the last half hour. I
have never seen anything like it. We are surely going to have a change
of weather."

Mr. Malarius had hardly finished speaking, when a distant grumbling,
followed by a lugubrious roaring, fell upon their ears. The sky became
covered with a cloud as black as ink, which spread rapidly in all
directions, and obscured every object with great swiftness. Then
suddenly, after an interval of complete silence, the leaves of the
trees, the bits of straw, the sand, and even the stones, were swept away
by a sudden gust of wind.

The hurricane had begun.

It raged with unheard-of violence. The chimneys, the window shutters,
and in some places even the roofs of the houses were blown down; and the
boat-houses without exception were carried away and destroyed by the
wind. In the fiord, which was usually as calm as a well in a court-yard,
the most terrible tempest raged; the waves were enormous and came and
went, breaking against the shore with a deafening noise.

The cyclone raged for an hour, then arrested in its course by the
heights of Norway, it moved toward the south, and swept over continental
Europe. It is noted in meteorological annals as one of the most
extraordinary and disastrous that ever was known upon the Atlantic
coast. These great changes of the atmosphere are now generally announced
beforehand by the telegraph. Most of the European sea-ports forewarned
of the danger have time to warn vessels and seamen of the threatened
tempest, and they seek a safe anchorage. By this means many disasters
are averted.

But on the distant and less frequented coasts, in the fishing-hamlets,
the number of shipwrecks was beyond computation.

In one office, that of "Veritas" in France, there were registered not
less than 730.

The first thought of all the members of the Hersebom family, as well as
of all the other families of fishermen, was naturally for those who were
on the sea on this disastrous day. Mr. Hersebom went most often to the
western coast of a large island which was about two miles distant,
beyond the entrance to the fiord. It was the spot where he had first
seen Erik. They hoped that during the tempest he had been able to find
shelter by running his boat upon the low and sandy shore. But Erik and
Otto felt so anxi