e the church was empty, and the
street below it full of people, striving and struggling against the
blast, and breasting it at an incline like swimmers, but beaten back
ever and anon and hurled against one another, with tattered umbrellas,
hats gone, and bonnets hanging. And among them, like gulls before the
wind, blew dollops of spray and chunks of froth, with every now and then
a slate or pantile.

All this was so bad that scarcely any body found power to speak, or
think, or see. The Major did his very best to lead us, but could by no
means manage it. And I screamed into his soundest ear to pull Aunt Mary
into some dry house--for she could not face such buffeting--and to let
me fare for myself as I might. So we left Mrs. Hockin in the bailiff's
house, though she wanted sadly to come with us, and on we went to behold
the worst. And thus, by running the byes of the wind, and craftily
hugging the corners, we got to the foot of the street at last, and then
could go no further.

For here was the very sea itself, with furious billows panting. Before
us rolled and ran a fearful surf of crested whiteness, torn by the
screeching squalls, and tossed in clashing tufts and pinnacles. And
into these came, sweeping over the shattered chine of shingle, gigantic
surges from the outer deep, towering as they crossed the bar, and
combing against the sky-line, then rushing onward, and driving the
huddle of the ponded waves before them.

The tide was yet rising, and at every blow the wreck and the havoc grew
worse and worse. That long sweep of brick-work, the "Grand Promenade,"
bowed and bulged, with wall and window knuckled in and out, like
wattles; the "Sea Parade" was a parade of sea; and a bathing-machine
wheels upward lay, like a wrecked Noah's Ark, on the top of the
"Saline-Silico-Calcareous Baths."

The Major stood by me, while all his constructions "went by the board,"
as they say at sea; and verily every thing was at sea. I grieved for him
so that it was not the spray alone that put salt drops on my cheeks. And
I could not bear to turn and look at his good old weather-beaten face.
But he was not the man to brood upon his woes in silence. He might have
used nicer language, perhaps, but his inner sense was manful.

"I don't care a damn," he shouted, so that all the women heard him. "I
can only say I am devilish glad that I never let one of those houses."

There was a little band of seamen, under the shelter of a garden wall,