That night of tempest began in gusts and squalls, with lulls between, which were not a little deceptive, since they made one think that the wind was gone for good, though while the belief was growing there would come another shrieking outrush and a low roaring in the chimney, and such a shrill and doleful whistling in the casements, which there was no art in carpentry to hermetically seal against the winds of that wild, rugged western coast, as might have made one imagine the air to be filled with the ghosts of departed boatswains plying their silver pipes as they sped onwards in the race of black air. Some while before seven o'clock it had settled into a gale, that was slowly but obstinately gathering in power, as I might know by the gradually raised notes in the humming it made, and by the ever-deepening thunder of warring billows rushing into breakers and bursting upon sand and crag. It came along in a furious play of wet, too, at times; the rain lashed the windows like small shot, and twice there was a brilliant flash of lightning that seemed spiral and crimsoned; but, if thunder followed, it was lost in the uproar of the wind. It was a night to 'stand by,' as a sailor would say; at any moment a summons might come, and, while that weather held, I knew there must be no sleep for me. It would have been all the same, indeed, barque or no barque, for this was a night to make a very hell of the waters along our line of coast; there was not another lifeboat station within twenty-five miles, and, even had the bay been empty, as I say, yet, as coxswain of the boat, I must have held myself ready for a call--ready for the notes of the bell summoning us to the rescue of a vessel that had been blown out of the sea into the bay--ready for a breathless appeal for help from some mounted messenger despatched by the coastguards miles distant to tell me that there was a ship stranded and that all hands must perish if we did not hurry to her. My mother sat silent, with her face rendered austere by anxiety. It was about eight o'clock, when someone knocked hurriedly at the door. I ran out, being too eager to await the attendance of the servant; but, instead of some rough figure of a boatman which I had expected to see, in swept Mr. Trembath, who was carried by the violence of the wind several feet along the passage before he could bring himself up. I put my shoulder to the door, but believed I should have had to call for help to close it, so desperate was the resistance. 'What a night! What a night!' cried the clergyman. 'What is the news? You will not tell me, Tregarthen, that the ship yonder is going to hold her own against this wind and the sea that is running?' 'Pray step in,' said I. 'You are plucky to show your face to it!'