"Yes, he'd ha' been about thirty year old in January, of the year
'nine. The storm got up in the night o' the twenty-first o' that
month. My father was dressed and out long before daylight; he never
was one to 'bide in bed, let be that the gale by this time was pretty
near lifting the thatch over his head. Besides which, he'd fenced a
small 'taty-patch that winter, down by Lowland Point, and he wanted
to see if it stood the night's work. He took the path across
Gunner's Meadow--where they buried most of the bodies afterwards.
The wind was right in his teeth at the time, and once on the way
(he's told me this often) a great strip of ore-weed came flying
through the darkness and fetched him a slap on the cheek like a cold
hand. But he made shift pretty well till he got to Lowland, and then
had to drop upon his hands and knees and crawl, digging his fingers
every now and then into the shingle to hold on, for he declared to me
that the stones, some of them as big as a man's head, kept rolling
and driving past till it seemed the whole foreshore was moving
westward under him. The fence was gone, of course; not a stick left
to show where it stood; so that, when first he came to the place, he
thought he must have missed his bearings. My father, sir, was a very
religious man; and if he reckoned the end of the world was at hand--
there in the great wind and night, among the moving stones--you may
believe he was certain of it when he heard a gun fired, and, with
the same, saw a flame shoot up out of the darkness to windward,
making a sudden fierce light in all the place about. All he could
find to think or say was, 'The Second Coming--The Second Coming!
The Bridegroom cometh, and the wicked He will toss like a ball into a
large country!' and being already upon his knees, he just bowed his
head and 'bided, saying this over and over.

"But by'm-by, between two squalls, he made bold to lift his head and