s by the increasing gale, while the tide at its
ebb seceded entirely from the town. The change of wind rather increased the
fury of the sea, but it altered its late dusky hue to a bright green; and
in spite of its unmitigated clamour, its more cheerful appearance instilled
hope and pleasure. All day we watched the ranging of the mountainous waves,
and towards sunset a desire to decypher the promise for the morrow at its
setting, made us all gather with one accord on the edge of the cliff. When
the mighty luminary approached within a few degrees of the tempest-tossed
horizon, suddenly, a wonder! three other suns, alike burning and brilliant,
rushed from various quarters of the heavens towards the great orb; they
whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to our dazzled eyes; the
sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a
furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The horses
broke loose from their stalls in terror--a herd of cattle, panic struck,
raced down to the brink of the cliff, and blinded by light, plunged down
with frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied by the
apparition of these meteors was comparatively short; suddenly the three
mock suns united in one, and plunged into the sea. A few seconds
afterwards, a deafening watery sound came up with awful peal from the spot
where they had disappeared.

Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange satellites, paced with
its accustomed majesty towards its western home. When--we dared not trust
our eyes late dazzled, but it seemed that--the sea rose to meet it--it
mounted higher and higher, till the fiery globe was obscured, and the wall
of water still ascended the horizon; it appeared as if suddenly the motion
of earth was revealed to us--as if no longer we were ruled by ancient
laws, but were turned adrift in an unknown region of space. Many cried
aloud, that these were no meteors, but globes of burning matter, which had
set fire to the earth, and caused the vast cauldron at our feet to bubble
up with its measureless waves; the day of judgment was come they averred,
and a few moments would transport us before the awful countenance of the
omnipotent judge; while those less given to visionary terrors, declared
that two conflicting gales had occasioned the last phaenomenon. In support
of this opinion they pointed out the fact that the east wind died away,
while the rushing of the coming west mingled its wi