.

Meanwhile two men were tugging at each oar, and Barnes himself steering
with the sign-board; and the head of the boat was kept against the
wind and the billows from our breakwater. Some of these seemed resolved
(though shorn of depth and height in crossing) to rush all over us and
drown us in the washer-women's drying ground. By skill and presence
of mind, our captain, Barnes, foiled all their violence, till we got a
little shelter from the ruins of the "Young Men's Christian Institute."

"Hold all!" cried Barnes; "only keep her head up, while I look about
what there is to do."

The sight was a thing to remember; and being on the better side now of
the scud, because it was flying away from us, we could make out a great
deal more of the trouble which had befallen Bruntsea. The stormy fiord
which had usurped the ancient track of the river was about a furlong in
width, and troughed with white waves vaulting over. And the sea rushed
through at the bottom as well, through scores of yards of pebbles, as it
did in quiet weather even, when the tide was brimming. We in the tossing
boat, with her head to the inrush of the outer sea, were just like
people sitting upon the floats or rafts of a furious weir; and if any
such surge had topped the ridge as the one which flung our boat to us,
there could be no doubt that we must go down as badly as the Major's
houses. However, we hoped for the best, and gazed at the desolation
inland.

Not only the Major's great plan, but all the lower line of old Bruntsea,
was knocked to pieces, and lost to knowledge in freaks of wind-lashed
waters. Men and women were running about with favorite bits of
furniture, or feather-beds, or babies' cradles, or whatever they had
caught hold of. The butt ends of the three old streets that led down
toward the sea-ground were dipped, as if playing seesaw in the surf, and
the storm made gangways of them and lighthouses of the lamp-posts. The
old public-house at the corner was down, and the waves leaping in at the
post-office door, and wrecking the globes of the chemist.

"Drift and dash, and roar and rush, and the devil let loose in the thick
of it. My eyes are worn out with it. Take the glass, Erema, and tell
us who is next to be washed away. A new set of clothes-props for Mrs.
Mangles I paid for the very day I came back from town."

With these words, the lord of the submarine manor (whose strength of
spirit amazed me) offered his pet binocular, which he