accustomed resting-place, in full view of the hotel, though not
near enough to shore to lower her gang-plank.... But she had sung
her swan-song. Gathering in from the northeast, the waters of
the bay were already marbling over the salines and half across
the island; and still the wind increased its paroxysmal power.

Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props upon
which they rested. A chimney fumbled. Shutters were wrenched
off; verandas demolished. Light roofs lifted, dropped again, and
flapped into ruin. Trees bent their heads to the earth. And
still the storm grew louder and blacker with every passing hour.

The Star rose with the rising of the waters, dragging her anchor.

Two more anchors were put out, and still she dragged--dragged in
with the flood,--twisting, shuddering, careening in her agony.
Evening fell; the sand began to move with the wind, stinging
faces like a continuous fire of fine shot; and frenzied blasts
came to buffet the steamer forward, sideward. Then one of her
hog-chains parted with a clang like the boom of a big bell. Then
another! ... Then the captain bade his men to cut away all her
upper works, clean to the deck. Overboard into the seething went
her stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins,--and whirled away. And
the naked hull of the Star, still dragging her three anchors,
labored on through the darkness, nearer and nearer to the immense
silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred windows were now all
aflame. The vast timber building seemed to defy the storm. The
wind, roaring round its broad verandas,--hissing through every
crevice with the sound and force of steam,--appeared to waste its
rage. And in the half-lull between two terrible gusts there came