crouching, or sitting, or standing (or whatever may be the attitude,
acquired by much voyaging and experience of bad weather, which can not
be solved, as to centre of gravity, even by the man who does it), and
these men were so taken with the Major's manifesto, clinched at once and
clarified to them by strong, short language, that they gave him a loud
"hurrah," which flew on the wings of the wind over house-tops. So queer
and sound is English feeling that now Major Hockin became in truth what
hitherto he was in title only--the lord and master of Bruntsea.

"A boat! a boat!" he called out again. "We know not who are drowning.
The bank still breaks the waves; a stout boat surely could live inside
it."

"Yes, a boat could live well enough in this cockle, though never among
them breakers," old Barnes, the fisherman, answered, who used to take us
out for whiting; "but Lord bless your honor, all the boats are thumped
to pieces, except yonner one, and who can get at her?"

Before restoring his hands to their proper dwelling-place--his
pockets--he jerked his thumb toward a long white boat, which we had not
seen through the blinding scud. Bereft of its brethren, or sisters--for
all fluctuating things are feminine--that boat survived, in virtue of
standing a few feet higher than the rest. But even so, and mounted
on the last hump of the pebble ridge, it was rolling and reeling with
stress of the wind and the wash of wild water under it.

"How nobly our Lyceum stands!" the Major shouted, for any thing less
than a shout was dumb. "This is the time to try institutions. I am proud
of my foundations."

In answer to his words appeared a huge brown surge, a mountain ridge,
seething backward at the crest with the spread and weight of onset.
This great wave smote all other waves away, or else embodied them, and
gathered its height against the poor worn pebble bank, and descended.
A roar distinct above the universal roar proclaimed it; a crash of
conflict shook the earth, and the shattered bank was swallowed in a
world of leaping whiteness. When this wild mass dashed onward into the
swelling flood before us, there was no sign of Lyceum left, but stubs of
foundation, and a mangled roof rolling over and over, like a hen-coop.

"Well, that beats every thing I ever saw," exclaimed the gallant Major.
"What noble timber! What mortise-work! No London scamping there, my
lads. But what comes here? Why, the very thing we wanted! Barnes, look