It was, indeed, earsplitting.  Not a sound arose from that devastated land.  Birds and beasts must lie dead by the thousand; not a horseman ventured abroad; not a whisper came from the cellar, where two hundred Africans might be dead from fright or suffocation.  Mrs. Mitchell had lit the candles, and there was something sinister and ironical in the steady flames.  How long before they would leap and add the final horror to what must be a night of horrors?  It was impossible to work in the dark, but every yellow point was a menace.

They had not long to endure the silence.  This time the hurricane sent no criers before it.  It burst out of the west with a fury so intensified that Alexander wondered if one stone in Frederikstadt were left upon another.  It was evident that it had gathered its forces for a final assault, and its crashing and roaring, as it tore across the unhappy Island it had marked for destruction, was that of a gigantic wheel whirling ten thousand cannon, exploding, and lashing each other in mid-air.  It seemed to Alexander that every ball they surely carried rattled on the roof, and the heavy stone structure vibrated for the first time.  It was two hours before he and Mrs. Mitchell met again, for they worked at opposite ends of the long gallery; but in the third both rushed simultaneously to the door.  It sprang back from its rusty fastenings, and they were but in time to seize the bar which passed through a staple in its middle, and pull it inward until it pressed hard against the jamb on the right.  There was no other way to secure it, and for three hours Alexander and Mrs. Mitchell dragged at it alternately, while the other attended to the windows.  By this time Alexander had ceased to wonder if he should see another morning, or much to care:  the storm was so magnificent in its almighty power, its lungs of iron bellowed its purpose with such furious iteration, as if out of all patience with the mortals who defied it, that Alexander was almost inclined to apologize.  More than once it took the house by the shoulders and shook it, and then a yell would come from below, a simultaneous note pitched in a key of common agony.  Suddenly the house seemed to spring from its foundations, then sink back as if to collapse.  Alexander called out that it had been uprooted and would go down the hill in another moment, but Mrs. Mitchell, who was at the bar, muttered, “An earthquake.  I believe a hurricane shakes the very centre of the earth.”

They feared that the foundations of the house had been loosened, and that the next blast would turn it over, but the house was one of the strongest in the Caribbees, built to withstand the worst that Nature could do, so long as man saw to its needs; and when the hurricane at last revolved its artillery away into the east, carrying with it that piercing rattle of the giant’s castinets, which never for a moment had ceased to perform its part, roof and walls were firm.  Mrs. Mitchell and Alexander sank where they had stood, and slept for twenty hours.