While For A
Moment The Night Was Dark As Erebus, Again
The Vivid Flash Of Lightning Exposed To View The
Swaying Forests And The Gloomy Sound.
The sea
pounded on the beach as if asking for admission
to old Pamplico.
It seemed to say, I demand a
new inlet; and, as though trying to carry out its
desire, sent great waves rolling up the shingle
and over into the hollows among the hills,
washing down the low sand dunes as if they also
were in collusion with it to remove this frail
barrier, this narrow strip of low land which
separated the Atlantic from the wide interior
sheet of water.
The phosphorescent sea, covered with its tens
of millions of animalcula, each one a miniature
light-house, changed in color from inky blackness
to silver sheen. Will the ocean take to itself
this frail foothold? - we queried. Will it
ingulf us in its insatiable maw, as the whale did
Jonah? There was no subsidence, no pause in
the storm. It howled, bellowed, and screeched
like a legion of demons, so that the crashing of
falling trees, and the twisting of the sturdy
live oak's toughest limbs, could hardly be heard in
the din. Yet during this wild night my
storm-hardened companion sat with his pretty wife by
the open fireplace, as unmoved as though we
were in the shelter of a mountain side, while he
calmly discoursed of storms, shipwrecks, and
terrible struggles for life that this lonely coast
had witnessed, which sent thrills of horror to
my heart.
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