But the snow soon changed to rain, the squall turned into a northeast wind, the wind rose to a gale, and Barbara and I decided to see the Atlantic in a real storm. We went home first for rubber coats, and then set off down the road to the ocean side of the Cape. The wind from the Atlantic goes over the Pamet valley in one great rush of invisible swiftness. As you lean forward against it, you feel that you must run to hold your own. If we had been going the other way, we could have spread our cloaks and gone flying home like witches, over the dunes. As it was, beating our way against it, we had to stop in the lee of the bayberry slopes to catch our breath. Ahead of us we saw only the wave-like crests of the dunes, one after another, with their patches of ruddy wild cranberry, and their streaks of sand and snow. And then, as we went battling over the top of the last rise in the road, we saw between two sand-dunes ahead of us a darker hill beyond, its peculiar heavy gray coloring dull and threatening; its crest lay straight against the sky, and all the snowy white streaks along it were in motion. It was the sea. We made for the top of the nearest dune ahead. It rose up steep as a breaker itself, with a jagged edge at the top where the wind had scooped out sharp hollows at the roots of the beach-grass. We each made straight for one of these hollows, in one last determined dash up the sheer slope. All this time, the noise of tumult had been growing louder and louder, and when we reached the crest, there it was before us, the whole Atlantic ocean rearing toward our frail strip of sandy shore. We had the horrible impression that the whole roaring thing was one gray hill of water, coming in. The breakers were plunging along from sky to shore with no regard for order. You could not have watched for the ninth wave, for they were breaking in masses, three great thunderheads at a time crashing into each other from different directions and coming up the beach with a shout, still struggling together in foam. Before they were half-way in, another surge was almost on top of them, with a huge white-horse breaker rearing at one side--everywhere one rush of confusion and terrible tossing with white crests of spray. There was not a sail in sight, or a human being, or an island, or a bird; only a world of furious water and a ragged horizon of mist and trailing cloud as far as we could see in three directions.