of glass were smashed by the mere force of the gale,
without anything having touched them. Even now I was not at all sure the
house would go. My books, I saw, were lost; for the rain poured past the
bookcases, as if it had been the Colonarie River. But we carried a good
deal of furniture into the passage at the entrance; we set Susan there
on a sofa, and the Black Housekeeper was even attempting to get her some
breakfast. The house, however, began to shake so violently, and the rain
was so searching, that she could not stay there long. She went into her
own room and I stayed to see what could be done.

"Under the forepart of the house, there are cellars built of stone,
but not arched. To these, however, there was no access except on the
outside; and I knew from my own experience that Susan could not have
gone a step beyond the door, without being carried away by the storm,
and probably killed on the spot. The only chance seemed to be that of
breaking through the floor. But when the old Cook and myself resolved on
this, we found that we had no instrument with which it would be possible
to do it. It was now clear that we had only God to trust in. The front
windows were giving way with successive crashes, and the floor shook
as you may have seen a carpet on a gusty day in London. I went into
our bedroom; where I found Susan, Tyrrell, and a little Colored girl of
seven or eight years old; and told them that we should probably not
be alive in half an hour. I could have escaped, if I had chosen to go
alone, by crawling on the ground either into the kitchen, a separate
stone building at no great distance, or into the open fields away from
trees or houses; but Susan could not have gone a yard. She became quite
calm when she knew the worst; and she sat on my knee in what seemed the
safest corner of the room, while every blast was bringing nearer and
nearer the moment of our seemingly certain destruction.--

"The house was under two parallel roofs; and the one next the sea,
which sheltered the other, and us who were under the other, went off, I
suppose about ten o'clock. After my old plan, I will give you a sketch,
from which you may perceive how we were situated:--

[In print, a figure representing a floor-plan appears here]

The _a_, _a_ are the windows that were first destroyed: _b_ went next;
my books were between the windows _b_, and on the wall opposite to them.
The lines _c_ and _d_ mark the directions of the two r