them against the window panes. A sudden roar
of thunder resounding overhead comes as a fit adjunct to the despair
embodied in them. All nature is awake, and the air seems full of its
death-knells.

Portia, sick at heart, moves silently away.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
--_Julius Caesar._

"Eyes, look your last;
Arms, take your last embrace!"
--_Romeo and Juliet._

THE night closes in, the rain has ceased, or only now and then declares
itself in fitful bursts, but still the wind rages and the storm beats
upon land and sea, as though half its fury is not yet expended. The
clouds are scudding hurriedly toward the West, and now and then, as they
separate, one catches a glimpse of a pale, dying moon trying to shine in
the dark vaults above, her sickly gleam only rendering more terrible the
aspect of the land below.

Still the lightning comes and goes, and the thunder kills the sacred
calm of night; Dulce and Julia, standing in the window, gaze fearfully
towards the angry heavens, and speak to each other in whispers. Portia,
who is sitting in an arm-chair, with her colorless face uplifted and her
head thrown back, is quite silent, waiting with a kind of morbid longing
for each returning flash. The very children are subdued, and, lying in a
pretty group upon the hearth-rug, forget to laugh or play, or do
anything save cry aloud, "Ah! wasn't _that_ a big one?" when the
lightning comes, or, "That was the loudest one yet," when the deafening
thunder rolls.

The men are standing in another window, talking in low tones of Fabian's
exculpation, when Fabian himself comes in, eagerly, excitedly, and so
unlike the Fabian of old that Portia gazes at him in silent wonder.

"There's a ship in sore trouble down there," he says, pointing as though
he can see the sea down below, where now the angry surf is rolling in,
mountains high, hoarsely roaring as it comes. "Brown from the
coast-guard station has just run up to tell us of it. They are about to
man the life-boat; who will come down to the beach with me?"

They have all come forward by this time, and now the men, going eagerly
to seize on any coats and hats nearest to them, make themselves ready to
go down and render any assistance that may be required of them. The
station is but a little one, the coast-guards few, and of late a sort of
in