ting off steam by the shore, so that I
caught my breath and felt my blood run cold for an instant, and I turned
about, expecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her
course; but there was nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low bank
at the entrance of the Hollow, between me and the ocean, and suspecting
that I might have risen into another stratum of air in ascending the
hill, which had wafted to me only the ordinary roar of the sea, I
immediately descended again, to see if I lost the sound; but, without
regard to my ascending or descending, it died away in a minute or two,
and yet there was scarcely any wind all the while. The old man said that
this was what they called the "rut," a peculiar roar of the sea before
the wind changes, which, however, he could, not account for. He thought
that he could tell all about the weather from the sounds which the sea
made.

Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has it among his
weather-signs, that "the resounding of the sea from the shore, and
murmuring of the winds in the woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind
to follow."

Being on another part of the coast one night afterwards, I heard the
roar of the surf a mile distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign
that the wind would work round east, and we should have rainy weather.
The ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this roar was
occasioned by its effort to preserve its equilibrium, the wave reaching
the shore before the wind. Also the captain of a packet between this
country and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave on the
Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which indicated
that at a distance the wind was blowing from an opposite quarter, but
the undulation had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of "tide-rips"
and "ground-swells," which they suppose to have been occasioned by
hurricanes and earthquakes, and to have travelled many hundred, and
sometimes even two or three thousand miles.

Before sunrise the next morning they let us out again, and I ran over to
the beach to see the sun come out of the ocean. The old woman of
eighty-four winters was already out in the cold morning wind,
bare-headed, tripping about like a young girl, and driving up the cow to
milk. She got the breakfast with despatch, and without noise or bustle;
and meanwhile the old man resumed his stories.

After breakfast we looked at his clock, which was out of order,