CHAPTER XV.
STORM-STAYED.
FILES of newspapers, already yellowed, can give the reader, who cares for details of such events, long accounts of the famous gale that suddenly lashed the western Atlantic to a fury of destruction in the autumn of 188–. It swept the rocky coasts of New England with a power that recent tempests have seldom equaled. Fishing-smacks, merchant craft of stalwart build, and yachts, belated in their return home, were dashed by dozens on the reefs of the Middle and Eastern States, swallowed up by the terrific sea that ran at its highest for days together, or, like empty soap-boxes in surf, were driven to shore. The death-list of seamen and others, unfortunate enough to be at the gale's mercy or mercilessness ran well up into the hundreds. Nor was that all. For scores of miles inland travel was interrupted by wash-outs and cavings-in, on highways and railroads. The telegraph and mail-
