Pete turned back. Surely Kate had called somewhere. She would be at home by this time. He tried to run, but the wind was now in his face. It was veering northwards every minute, and rising to the force of a hurricane. He tied his handkerchief over his head and under his chin to hold on his hat. His hair whipped his ears like rods. Sometimes he was swept into the hedge; often he was brought to his knees. Still he toiled along through sheets of spray that glistened with the colours of a rainbow, and ran over the ground like driven rain. His eyes smarted, and the taste on his lips was salt. The moon was now riding at the full through a wild flecked sky, and Pete could clearly see, as he returned towards the bay, a crowd of human figures on the cliffs above Port Lewaige. Quaking with undefined fears, he pushed on until he had joined them. The schooner, abandoned by her crew, had parted her cable, and was rolling like a blinded porpoise towards the rocks. She fell on them with the groan of a living creature, and, the instant her head was down, the white lions of the sea leapt over her with a howl, the water swirled through her bulwarks and filled her hatches, her rudder was unshipped, her sails were torn from their gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed, and sung, and slept, and laughed, and jested, was a broken wreck in the heavy wallowings of the waves. Kate had not returned when Pete got back to Sulby, but the excitement of her absence was eclipsed for the time by the turmoil of Cæsar's trouble. Standing in the dark on the top of the midden, he was shouting to the dairy door in a voice of thunder, which went off at the end of his beard like the puling of a cat. The mill-wheel was going same as a “whirlingig”--was there nobody to “hould the brake?” The stable roof was stripped, and the mare was tearing herself to pieces in a roaring “pit of hell”--was there never a shoulder for the door? The cow-house thatch was flapping like a sail--was there nothing in the world but a woman (Nancy Joe) to help a man to throw a ladder and a stone over it? Only when Cæsar had been pacified was there silence to speak of Kate. “I picked up news of her coming back by Claughbane,” said Pete, “and traced her as near home as the 'Ginger.' She can't be far away. Where is she?” Those who were cool enough fell to conjecture. Grannie had no resource but groans. Nancy was moaning by her side. The rest were full of their own troubles. Blind Jane was bewailing her affliction. “You can all see,” she cried, “but I'm not knowing the harm that's coming on me.” “Hush, woman, hush,” said Pete; “we're all same as yourself half our lives--we're all blind at night.” In the midst of the tumult a knock came to the door, and Pete made a plunge towards the porch. “Wait,” cried Cæsar. “Nobody else comes here to-night except the girl herself. Another wind like the last and we'll have the roof off the house too.”