in have happily escaped unhurt.

"From the day of our arrival in the West Indies until Thursday the 11th
instant, which will long be a memorable day with us, I had been doing my
best to get ourselves established comfortably; and I had at last bought
the materials for making some additions to the house. But on the morning
I have mentioned, all that I had exerted myself to do, nearly all the
property both of Susan and myself, and the very house we lived in, were
suddenly destroyed by a visitation of Providence far more terrible than
any I have ever witnessed.

"When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at eight o'clock, I
pointed out to her the extraordinary height and violence of the surf,
and the singular appearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down
the valleys before us. At this time I had so little apprehension of what
was coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the storm
should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a quarter of
an hour the House-Negroes came in, to close the outside shutters of the
windows. They knew that the plantain-trees about the Negro houses had
been blown down in the night; and had told the maid-servant Tyrrell, but
I had heard nothing of it. A very few minutes after the closing of the
windows, I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's room, at the south and
commonly the most sheltered end of the House, were giving way. I tried
to tie them; but the silk handkerchief which I used soon gave way;
and as I had neither hammer, boards nor nails in the house, I could do
nothing more to keep out the tempest. I found, in pushing at the leaf of
the shutter, that the wind resisted, more as if it had been a stone wall
or a mass of iron, than a mere current of air. There were one or two
people outside trying to fasten the windows, and I went out to help; but
we had no tools at hand: one man was blown down the hill in front of the
house, before my face; and the other and myself had great difficulty in
getting back again inside the door. The rain on my face and hands felt
like so much small shot from a gun. There was great exertion necessary
to shut the door of the house.

"The windows at the end of the large room were now giving way; and I
suppose it was about nine o'clock, when the hurricane burst them in, as
if it had been a discharge from a battery of heavy cannon. The shutters
were first forced open, and the wind fastened them back to the wall;
and then the panes