Night fell on Eyemouth; and, God, what a night!  “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”

By little and little, by ones and twos, boats, battered and with sails torn to ribbons, with crews exhausted and distraught, kept arriving during the Saturday and Sunday, bringing men, as it were, back from the dead.  One or two, under bare poles, had ridden the gale out at sea, lying up into the wind as near as might be, threshing through those awful seas hour after hour, buried almost, sometimes, in the seething cauldron, or struck by tons of solid water when some huge mountain of a wave, toppling to its fall, rushed at her out of the blackness.  From minute to minute the men never knew but that the next roaring billow would engulf them also, as already they had seen it roll over and swallow up their neighbours.

It was the skipper of the White Star that told afterwards how, before the tornado burst—­as some said, “like a clap of thunder”—­the first thing to take his attention from the shooting of his lines was boats on the weather side of him hurriedly shortening sail, or letting all run.  To the nor’ard, from horizon almost to zenith, already the sky was black as ink, the sea beneath white with flying spume.  Then like magic the sea got up, and the White Star turned to run for Eyemouth, with the Myrtle in company.  But darkness and the fierce turmoil of waters forced them to lay to in order to make certain of their position.  As they lay, pitching fearfully and many times almost on their beam ends from the violence of the wind, a foaming mountain of water came thundering down on the White Star, so that for a brief moment all thought that she was gone; and almost as she shook herself free, just such another tremendous wave struck the Myrtle, and rolled her over like a walnut-shell skiff, a child’s plaything.  As the White Star rose on successive waves, her crew twice afterwards saw the Myrtle heave up her side for a second ere she went to the bottom, but of her seven hands no man was ever seen again.  Head-reaching into the wind, the White Star gradually made her perilous way, presently passing yet another boat floating bottom up, her rigging trailing in the water around her, but no bodies visible anywhere.  Of the rest of the fleet, no sign.  Four and forty hours later the White Star reached safety at North Shields.  Other boats that also headed for the open sea were even longer in coming to port, but all, as they drew farther and farther from land, found weather less terrible, a sea less dangerous, than that from which by the skin of their teeth they had escaped.  Some of the smitten craft drove far to the south before the wind, and after escapes many and incredible, reached a haven of safety, with men worn and dazed, but not all with crews complete; too many paid toll to the