How would it have been, if, shutters and windows being driven in, our poor room had _shipped_ one of those vast billows which the storm-wind thus hurled upon the adjacent heaths? We were, in fact, exposed to the strange chance of being shipwrecked on the land. Our house, so close to the shore, might at any moment have its roof or even its upper story carried right away by wind and wave. The villagers often told us that that was, in fact, their nightly thought and their nightly terror, and they advised us to seek a more inland shelter. But we still comforted ourselves with the thought that the longer this tempest had lasted, the sooner it must come to an end; and, to the undoubtedly reasonable advice thus given to us, our reply was, still, "To-morrow, to-morrow." The overland news that came to us, told of nothing but wrecks, still wrecks. Close by us, on the 30th of October, a vessel from the South Sea, with a crew of thirty hands, foundered, with a loss of all hands and her rich cargo--and this at the very entrance of the roadstead. After having passed through so many storms and calms, after having safely weathered so many rocks and shoals, she had arrived within sight, within hail, almost within touch of a little beach of fine sand, the fine-weather bathing place of delicate and timid women. Well! That seemingly gentle little sandy beach, upheaved into a huge and impassable sandbar--was the grave of the good ship, which ran upon it with frightful force, and was crushed, shivered into small pieces--converted from a "thing of life," into a mutilated corpse. What became of the crew? Not a trace of them has ever been found; they were probably swept, vainly struggling, from the deck, and swallowed up by the sands.