We sat in the sitting-room in a silence that was only now and then broken by some remark about the weather, or when one or other of the men came in from making the round of the house to see how things were going on.

My father sat in restless anxiety about the store-house, and about his yacht lying down in the bay, which, because of the heavy seas which came in, in spite of the harbour’s good position, had been trebly moored in the afternoon.  I saw him several times fold his hands as if in prayer, and then, as if cheered, walk up and down the room for a while, until anxiety again overcame him, and he sat down looking straight before him, gloomy and pale as before.

The storm rather increased than abated.  Once we heard a dull thud, which might well have come from the storehouse.  I saw drops of perspiration standing on my father’s forehead, and was deeply pained to see his anguish of mind, without being able to do anything to help him.

A little while after he went out into the office with a candle and came back with an old large-type prayer-book, in which he turned to a prayer and a hymn to be sung during a storm at sea.

All the servants without being called, gathered in the parlour for family worship.

My father sat with the prayer-book in his great rough hands, which he had folded on the table before him, between the two candles.  First he read the prayer, and then sang all the verses of the hymn, while those of us who knew the tune joined by degrees in the refrain.  It was altogether as if we were holding prayers in a ship’s cabin while the vessel was in danger, and my father must have had the idea from some such scene in his hard youth.  During prayers we all thought the storm abated a little, and that it only began again after they were ended.

We found the elder Martinez on his knees by his bedside, perpetually crossing himself before a crucifix.  He had less reason for anxiety than we, for his brig lay with extra moorings under land in a little creek sheltered from the wind and waves.  He very much regretted now, however, that he had not gone on board to his son and the men.

Towards morning the storm abated a little, and, tired as we were, we went to bed, while two of the servants still sat up.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning, when it began to grow light, that we could first see the destruction done.  Several hundred tiles from the house roof lay spread over the yard, part of the outer pannelling of the wall on the windward side was torn away, and the end of the pier lay on one side down in the sea, a couple of piles having been displaced by the waves.  The storehouse, too, had suffered some damage.

Our yacht, however, was most evidently in danger.  Two of her ropes had given way, the anchors having lost their hold, and everything now depended upon the third and longest rope, which was fastened to the mooring ring on the rock at the mouth of the bay.  There was only the ship’s dog on board, a large white poodle, which stood with its fore-paws on the stern bulwarks and barked, without our being able to hear a sound in the wind, while the waves washed over the yacht’s bows.