still held, while the tree had been shorn of its windage. He began to
climb up. He was so weak that he went slowly, and sea after sea caught
him before he was above them. Then he tied himself to the trunk and
stiffened his soul to face the night and he knew not what.

He felt very lonely in the darkness. At times it seemed to him that it
was the end of the world and that he was the last one left alive.
Still the wind increased. Hour after hour it increased. By what he
calculated was eleven o'clock, the wind had become unbelievable. It
was a horrible, monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote
and passed on but that continued to smite and pass on--a wall without
end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it
was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable
velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in
motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a
feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one
might do with the meat in the carcass of a steer; that he could seize
hold of the wind and hang on to it as a man might hang on to the face
of a cliff.

The wind strangled him. He could not face it and breathe, for it
rushed in through his mouth and nostrils, distending his lungs like
bladders. At such moments it seemed to him that his body was being
packed and swollen with solid earth. Only by pressing his lips to the
trunk of the tree could he breathe. Also, the ceaseless impact of the
wind exhausted him. Body and brain became wearied. He no longer
observed, no longer thought, and was but semiconscious. One idea
constituted his consciousness: SO THIS WAS A HURRICANE. That one idea
persisted irregularly. It was like a feeble flame that flickered
occasionally. From a state of stupor he would return to it--SO THIS