"When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at eight o'clock, I

pointed out to her the extraordinaryheight and violence of the surf,
and the singular appearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down

the valleys before us. At this time I had so little apprehension of
what was coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the

storm should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a
quarter of an hour the House-Negroes came in, to close the outside

shutters of the windows. They knew that the plantain-trees about the
Negro houses had been blown down in the night; and had told the

maid-servant Tyrrell, but I had heard nothing of it. A very few
minutes after the closing of the windows, I found that the shutters of

Tyrrell's room, at the south and commonly the most sheltered end of
the House, were giving way. I tried to tie them; but the silk

handkerchief which I used soon gave way; and as I had neither hammer,
boards nor nails in the house, I could do nothing more to keep out the

tempest. I found, in pushing at the leaf of the shutter, that the wind
resisted, more as if it had been a stone wall or a mass of iron, than

a mere current of air. There were one or two people outside trying to
fasten the windows, and I went out to help; but we had no tools at

hand: one man was blown down the hill in front of the house, before
my face; and the other and myself had great difficulty in getting back

again inside the door. The rain on my face and hands felt like so
much small shot from a gun. There was great exertion necessary to

shut the door of the house.
"The windows at the end of the large room were now giving way; and I

suppose it was about nine o'clock, when the hurricane burst them in,
as if it had been a discharge from a battery of heavy cannon. The

shutters were first forced open, and the wind fastened them back to
the wall; and then the panes of glass were smashed by the mere force

of the gale, without anything having touched them. Even now I was not
at all sure the house would go. My books, I saw, were lost; for the

rain poured past the bookcases, as if it had been the Colonarie River.
But we carried a good deal of furniture into the passage at the

entrance; we set Susan there on a sofa, and the Black Housekeeper was
even attempting to get her some breakfast. The house, however, began

to shake so violently, and the rain was so searching, that she could
not stay there long. She went into her own room and I stayed to see

what could be done.
"Under the forepart of the house, there are cellars built of stone,

but not arched. To these, however, there was no access except on the
outside; and I knew from my own experience that Susan could not have

gone a step beyond the door, without being carried away by the storm,
and probably killed on the spot. The only chance seemed to be that of

breaking through the floor. But when the old Cook and myself resolved
on this, we found that we had no instrument with which it would be

possible to do it. It was now clear that we had only God to trust in.
The front windows were giving way with successive crashes, and the

floor shook as you may have seen a carpet on a gusty day in London. I
went into our bedroom; where I found Susan, Tyrrell, and a little

Colored girl of seven or eight years old; and told them that we should
probably not be alive in half an hour. I could have escaped, if I had

chosen to go alone, by crawling on the ground either into the kitchen,
a separate stone building at no great distance, or into the open

fields away from trees or houses; but Susan could not have gone a
yard. She became quite calm when she knew the worst; and she sat on

my knee in what seemed the safest corner of the room, while every
blast was bringing nearer and nearer the moment of our seemingly

certain destruction.--
"The house was under two parallel roofs; and the one next the sea,

which sheltered the other, and us who were under the other, went off,
I suppose about ten o'clock. After my old plan, I will give you a

sketch, from which you may perceive how we were situated:--
[In print, a figure representing a floor-plan appears here]

The _a_, _a_ are the windows that were first destroyed: _b_ went
next; my books were between the windows _b_, and on the wall opposite

to them. The lines _c_ and _d_ mark the directions of the two roofs;
_e_ is the room in which we were, and 2 is a plan of it on a larger

scale. Look now at 2: _a_ is the bed; _c_, _c_ the two wardrobes;
_b_ the corner in which we were. I was sitting in an arm-chair,

holding my Wife; and Tyrrell and the little Black child were close to
us. We had given up all notion of surviving; and only waited for the

fall of the roof to perish together.
"Before long the roof went. Most of the materials, however, were

carried clear away: one of the large couples was caught on the
bedpost marked _d_, and held fast by the iron spike; while the end of

it hung over our heads: had the beam fallen an inch on either side of
the bedpost, it must necessarily have crushed us. The walls did not

go with the roof; and we remained for half an hour, alternately
praying to God, and watching them as they bent, creaked, and shivered

before the storm.
"Tyrrell and the child, when the roof was off, made their way through

the remains of the partition, to the outer door; and with the help of
the people who were looking for us, got into the kitchen. A good

while after they were gone, and before we knew anything of their fate,
a Negro suddenly came upon us; and the sight of him gave us a hope of

safety. When the people learned that we were in danger, and while
their own huts were flying about their ears, they crowded to help us;

and the old Cook urged them on to our rescue. He made five attempts,
after saving Tyrrell, to get to us; and four times he was blown down.

The fifth time he, and the Negro we first saw, reached the house. The
space they had to traverse was not above twenty yards of level ground,

if so much. In another minute or two, the Overseers and a crowd of
Negroes, most of whom had come on their hands and knees, were

surrounding us; and with their help Susan was carried round to the end
of the house; where they broke open the cellar window, and placed her

in comparative safety. The force of the hurricane was, by this time,
a good deal diminished, or it would have been impossible to stand

before it.
"But the wind was still terrific; and the rain poured into the cellars

through the floor above. Susan, Tyrrell, and a crowd of Negroes
remained under it, for more than two hours: and I was long afraid

that the wet and cold would kill her, if she did not perish more
violently. Happily we had wine and spirits at hand, and she was much

nerved by a tumbler of claret. As soon as I saw her in comparative
security, I went off with one of the Overseers down to the Works,

where the greater number of the Negroes were collected, that we might
see what could be done for them. They were wretched enough, but no

one was hurt; and I ordered them a dram apiece, which seemed to give
them a good deal of consolation.

"Before I could make my way back, the hurricane became as bad as at
first; and I was obliged to take shelter for half an hour in a ruined

Negro house. This, however, was the last of its extremeviolence. By
one o'clock, even the rain had in a great degree ceased; and as only

one room of the house, the one marked _f_; was standing, and that
rickety,--I had Susan carried in a chair down the hill, to the

Hospital; where, in a small paved unlighted room, she spent the next
twenty-four hours. She was far less injured than might have been

expected from such a catastrophe.
"Next day, I had the passage at the entrance of the house repaired and

roofed; and we returned to the ruins of our habitation, still
encumbered as they were with the wreck of almost all we were possessed

of. The walls of the part of the house next the sea were carried
away, in less I think than half an hour after we reached the cellar:

when I had leisure to examine the remains of the house, I found the
floor strewn with fragments of the building, and with broken

furniture; and our books all soaked as completely as if they had been
for several hours in the sea.