waves, and it blew straight off the land. It never let up blowing off the land all through the storm, and that was one of the queer things that happened.

33

“We had three days o’ wind, and then the snow broke, all to once, as though the sky opened and shook all its stuffing right out on us. With the coming o’ the snow the wind eased up a bit an’ let the water churn on the top of the sea until it was as white as the falling snow. Finally I couldn’t tell where the water ended and the snow began.

“The wind driving the sleet was cruel. Whenever Jo or I ventured out it cut our faces and made them raw and bleeding. At times the wind lifted the house right off its stone foundations and shook it, and I feared it would be blown clear over the bluff and set awash in the sea.”

“How terrible!” exclaimed Mrs. Seymour.

“It was all of that,” Fred agreed. “The second day of the snow I thought the wind hove to a mite, it seemed more quiet. I went to the window to see if the snow had let up. It had—but not in any way I ever had seen it in all my fifty years of life on this bluff. It was as if a path had been cut through the flying storm, straight and clear with the wind sweeping through, so that I could see beyond the bluff over the water. It was then I had my first glimpse of it, riding over the waves and coming ashore dead34 against the gale. It was such a thing as no mortal ever saw nowadays. I thought I was losing my wits to see a boat coming toward me, riding in to shore against the wind and while the tide was running out. I just couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me, for no boat that I ever heard tell of had struck on this section of the coast. Nature built here so that they can’t come in, what with Douglas Head stretching out to the north and making a current to sweep wrecks farther down; they strike to the north or the south of us, but never here.”

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“To see a ship coming in and be powerless to help it!” exclaimed Mr. Seymour as Fred paused for a sip of coffee and a bite of doughnut. “There was nothing that you could do?”

“Not a thing. I was alone with Jo, and even if we had been able to get out a small boat we couldn’t have done nothin’. She was coming in too fast. So we bundled up, Jo and I, and went out to stand by on the shore.”

“Into that storm?” Anne demanded. She had drawn close to her mother’s chair during the story 

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