The Captain realized that a gale was brewing. He gathered up his nets from their racks. He made them snug in the shack, and stowed away everything movable. He was weather-wise. He would not be caught unawares. A high tide had more than once taught him the lesson of that beach. He had the red skiff hauled well up out of harm's way. There was, too, an extra anchor tied to the painter. Captain Ichabod and the rooster entered their cottage, for refuge from the wind that was now blowing dangerously. The storm reached such proportions that from his window to seaward it was no longer possible to make out through the rain and spray the broad crêpe-like bands of black and white painted upon the great, towering lighthouse, at the extreme point of Cape Lookout, a few miles to the eastward. The shack was fairly shaking in the West India hurricane--for such it proved to be.... And great was the devastation wrought that night by both wind and wave. About midnight, Captain Ichabod, feeling that it was not quite safe to retire, stood in the open doorway. He little minded the pelting of the rain as it drove against his weathered cheek. He had donned his oilskins, hat and slicker, and was peering intently seaward. He had been to his skiff and had dragged it a couple of rods further up on the sand as a measure of safety. A yellow flash showed dimly on the black storm clouds that banked the horizon to the north of the Cape--wherein nestled a tiny harbor of refuge. Those who knew took advantage of this retreat in times of tempest.... Woe unto the hapless seafarer, unknowing the way. It did not take a second flash for the practised eye of the lone man in oilskins to recognize that this was the thing he had expected--even while praying God that it might not be. It was the rocket signal of a boat in distress. Within sound of the breakers, that could not be seen in the pitch black, was somewhere a mass of timber and iron, burdened with cargo and human freight. And that mass, which was a ship, dragged its anchor, as if that anchor were a toy--foot by foot to sure destruction on a beach that has known a hundred wrecks. The rockets continued to flare. Closer and closer to the outer shoals of the beach they beamed. The ship was swiftly and surely going to its doom. Turning his face to the clouded heavens, and raising his voice in a final appeal, Uncle Ichabod prayed: "God help the boys in such a surf." At the point where the ship was making the distress signals, the coast offered only a narrow strip of sand, running from the Cape to Ocracoke Inlet--many miles to the northeast.