On one awful night long ago, I
waited for hours watching waves that reared and thundered as if they
would charge headlong through the streets of the town. The white
crests nickered like flame, and below the crests the dreadful inky
bulge of each monster rolled on like doom--like death. Throughout the
mad night of tempest the guns from many distressed vessels rang out,
and I could see the violent sweep of the ships' lights as they were
hurled in wild arcs from crest to crest. Many and many a corpse lay
out on those sands in the morning; the bold, bronzed men stared with
awful glassy stare at the lowering sky; the little cabin-boy clasped
his fragment of wreckage as though it had been a toy, and smiled--oh,
so sweetly!--in spite of the cruel sand that filled his dead eyes.
There was turmoil enough out at sea, for the steadily northerly drift
was crossed by a violent roll from the east, and these two currents
were complicated in their movement by a rush of water that came like a
mill-race from the southward. Imagine a great city tossed about by a
monstrous earthquake that first dashes the streets against each other,
and then flings up the ruins in vast rolls; that may give some idea of
that memorable storm.
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