“We saw the storm hit the Carolina Cape. It was easy to see how trees in the Florida swamps without much root to grasp the earth were uprooted. Trees along the Carolina and Georgia coasts—big ones, taller than the houses in the vicinity—were bending before the blow the way wheat seems to ebb and flow in a summer’s breeze. The seas were very high and in occasional breaks in the lower clouds we could catch glimpses of yellowish breakers and a littered beach. It looked as if the rain and thrashing surf had churned up the bottom, and mud had mixed with the foamy water. The shore was littered with debris, big trees, and blackened seaweed, mostly. As a sort of aside, on the matter of stirring up the bottom, we found several conch shells and bits of coral on the beach after the storm that are not considered native in these parts. “Whether this next is typical of hurricanes or merely evidence that the storm had spent itself, I don’t know, but I do think it worthy of mention. We noticed occasional breakups in the clouds—not large areas, just a few seconds when everything brightened and when the firm outlines of a large cumulus could be seen through thin low scud. This was not in the center but as much as forty miles away where the stuff should have been most solid and where the sea was near its roughest. I have seen the ‘Eye’ of a hurricane on land as a weather forecaster. At that time we noticed a real breakup with stars and moonlight visible. The wind and noise stopped for a while and we could see an occasional bulging cumulus through the night. Whether this phenomenon is due merely to less energy available over land than over water, I wouldn’t even guess. In any event we noticed no such complete break in the eye at sea. In the center, so-called calm, though for my money it was mighty rough, about all that we noticed was that the pounding rain stopped for a minute or so. The clouds did not break clear through. There was a slight breakup to perhaps five thousand feet. There were bases of cumulus and several indefinite layers below this overcast though. The terrific bouncing around also stopped. We were out of the place in just a minute or two, so the eye couldn’t have been much more than five miles in diameter. Some of the other ships circled in the center, saw a flock of birds milling around there, and noted violent up and down drafts near its edge. We were in and out of the thing so fast that, frankly, we hardly had time to notice anything. I think we could have fallen the seven hundred feet to the water without my knowing it, we were so busy with the camera, papers, and instruments.