e to guess what tree
had taken a shy at me. So many towered above, one over the other, and
the missile, whatever it was, dropped in the stream and was gone before
I had recovered my wits. (I scarce know what I write, so hideous a
Niagara of rain roars, shouts, and demonizes on the iron roof--it is
pitch dark too--the lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck
my own road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one of the most
wonderful mud statues ever witnessed. In the afternoon I tried again,
going up the other path by the garden, but was early drowned out; came
home, plotted out what I had done, and then wrote this truck to you.

Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won't go,[10] hating the sea
at this wild season; I don't like to leave her; so it drones on, steamer
after steamer, and I guess it'll end by no one going at all. She is in a
dreadful misfortune at this hour; a case of kerosene having burst in the
kitchen. A little while ago it was the carpenter's horse that trod in a
nest of fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of our hopes. The farmer's
lot is not a happy one. And it looks like some real uncompromising bad
weather too. I wish Fanny's ear were well. Think of parties in
Monuments! think of me in Skerryvore, and now of this. It don't look
like a part of the same universe to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have
worked myself right out.

_Christmas Eve._--Yesterday, who could write? My wife near crazy with
ear-ache; the rain descending in white crystal rods and playing hell's
tattoo, like a _tutti_ of battering rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the
wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us
full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung
their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the
shed like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of
the bay vanished in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers
in the iron box, in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We
went to bed with mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard,
where you have only drowning ahead--whereas here you have a smash of
beams, a shower of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark and through
a whirlwind for the shelter of an unfinished stable--and my wife with
ear-ache! Well, well, this morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane
was looked for, the ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now
3.30, and the f