nd untoward storm swept down the North Atlantic and over the
seaboard far and near. In the Bay of Fundy that night the elements met
in their grandest extremes. Tide-rips and mountain waves opposed each
other with titanic force. All along the bleak and rock-ribbed coast the
boiling waters lay churned into foam. Over the breakwaters the giant
combers crashed and soared far up into the troubled sky; while out under
the black clouds of the night the whirlpools and the tempests met. Was
ever a night like this before? Those on shore thanked God; and those
with fathers on the sea gazed out upon a darkness where no star of hope
could shine.

Now and again through the Stygian gloom a torrent of sheet-lightning
rolled down across the heavens, bringing in its wake a moment of
terrible light. It was in one of these brief moments of illumination
that the wan watchers at Hall's Harbor discerned a long gray ship being
swept like a specter before the winds towards the Isle of Haut. Until
the flash of lightning the doomed seamen appeared to have been
unconscious of their fast approaching fate; and then, as if suddenly
awakened, they sent a long thin trail of light, to wind itself far up
into the darkness. Again and again the rockets shot upward from her bow,
while above the noises of the tempest came the roar of a gun.

The people on the shore looked at each other with blanched faces,
speechless, helpless. A lifetime by that shore had taught them the utter
puniness of the sons of men. Others would have tried to do something
with what they thought was their strong arm. But the fishermen knew too
well that the Fundy's arm was stronger. In silence they waited with
bated breath while the awful moments passed. Imperturbable they stood
there, with their feet in the white foam and their faces in the salt
spray, and gazed at the curtain of the night, behind which a tragedy was
passing, as dark and dire as any in the annals of the sea.

Another flash of lightning, and there, dashing upon the iron rocks, was
a great ship, with all her sails set, and a cloud of lurid smoke
trailing from her funnel. She was gray-colored, with auxiliary power,
and as her lines dawned upon those who saw her in the moment of light,
they burst out with one accord, "It's the _Kanawha_! It's the
_Kanawha_!" As if an answer to their sudden cry another gun roared, and
another shower of rockets shot up into the sky; and then all was lost
again in the darkness and the voic