One of the most remarkable cases of the power of the wind ashore was the removal of a stone of four hundredweight, which lay sheltered under a bank, to a distance of seven yards. On the Kingscote estate, in Gloucester, 600 trees, all about eighty feet in height, were thrown down within a compass of five acres. The storm was accompanied by thunder and lightning and waterspouts. A clergyman, writing from Besselsleigh, says:—“On Friday, the 26th of November, in the afternoon, about four of the clock, a country fellow came running to me, in a great fright, and very earnestly entreated me to go and see a pillar, as he called it, in the air in a field hard by. I went with the fellow, and when I came found it to be a spout marching directly with the wind; and I can think of nothing I can compare it to better than the trunk of an elephant, which it resembled—only much bigger. It was extended to a great length, and swept the ground as it went, leaving a mark behind. It crossed a field, and, which was very strange (and which I should scarce have been induced to believe had I not myself seen it, besides several countrymen, who were astonished at it, meeting with an oak that stood towards the middle of the field, snapped the body of it asunder. Afterwards, crossing a road, it sucked up the water that was in the cart-ruts. Then, coming to an old barn, it tumbled it down, and the thatch that was on the top was carried about by the wind, which was then very high and in great confusion. After this I followed it no farther, and therefore saw no more of it, but a parishioner of mine, going from hence to Hincksey, in a field about a quarter of a mile off of this place, was on the sudden knocked down and lay upon the place till some people came by and brought him home; and he is not yet quite recovered.” An earthquake is also said to have followed the great storm. Enough has now been written to show how universal were the effects of this terrible gale. The details, as recorded by Defoe and others, would fill several chapters like the present. The author of “Robinson Crusoe” puts, as we have seen, the loss of life partly on land but principally by sea, at 8,000, but a French authority places it at the enormous number of 30,000! It can well be believed that a large proportion of the casualties were never reported or recorded. [Illustration: A LIFE-BOAT GOING OUT.] [Illustration: GREATHEAD’S LIFE-BOAT.] CHAPTER XV. “MAN THE LIFE-BOAT!”