It was a great while before they got safely to the shelter of the duns; I suppose that it could not have taken them less than half an hour to cross the two hundred yards of sand that lay between them and the lee of the sand hills. Every now and then a heavier gust than usual would come, and then they would lay flat upon the sand again, holding on to the shifting surface, as though they feared being blown bodily away. But between the gusts they would contrive to crawl a few feet farther. At last they reached the lee of the hills, and so were sheltered from the full force of the wind, though the hurricane bellowed and roared above and around them with a noise such as Tom never heard before or since. The rain increased till it fell in torrents; it did not beat down the wind, for the tempest blew more and more heavily until just before morning, when it was something frightful. All that night the rain poured down upon them in a deluge, but I do not think that either of them noticed it, their minds being taken up with quite different matters. The darkness around them was utter and blank beyond what I can tell you. You could not have seen your hand within six inches of your face. It seemed as though the end of all things had come. Tom and Jack sat hand in hand;—when one of them said anything to the other, he had to put his lips to within an inch of his companion’s ear, to make him understand a single word. But very little was said between them, and most of the time they sat holding one another’s hand in silence. Now and then the ground would actually tremble beneath them, and at times a dim fear passed through Tom’s mind that the very sand hill above them would be carried bodily away with the force of that tremendous blast. About day-break, or what would have been day-break at an ordinary time, the rain ceased to fall, though the hurricane still raged with nearly as much fury as ever. At last the faint grey daylight came, and after a while they were able to see the things around them pretty clearly. The first thing that Tom saw was a white sea gull crouched on the ground close to him. He could have reached out his hand and have touched it, but it did not seem to be in the least afraid at his presence. There were hundreds of them around, but they all seemed to be dulled with terror, and made no effort to move out of the way, or to take to flight. At length, in the dim morning light, the ocean came out before them; it was a strange sight, for the surf was beaten down by the wind, until the sand beach reached out half as far again as it did on ordinary occasions.