And so the second winter of his hermitage drew near
its close, and with it came a storm that passed into local history,
and is still remembered. It uprooted giant trees along the river,
and with them the tiny rootlets of the life he was idly fostering.
The morning had been fitfully turbulent, the wind veering several
points south and west, with suspicions lulls, unlike the steady
onset of the regular southwest trades. High overhead the long
manes of racing cirro stratus streamed with flying gulls and
hurrying water-fowl; plover piped incessantly, and a flock of
timorous sand-pipers sought the low ridge of his cabin, while a
wrecking crew of curlew hastily manned the uprooted tree that
tossed wearily beyond the bar. By noon the flying clouds huddled
together in masses, and then were suddenly exploded in one vast
opaque sheet over the heavens. The sea became gray, and suddenly
wrinkled and old. There was a dumb, half-articulate cry in the
air,--rather a confusion of many sounds, as of the booming of
distant guns, the clangor of a bell, the trampling of many waves,
the creaking of timbers and soughing of leaves, that sank and fell
ere you could yet distinguish them.
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