It is Monday morning now, and the world is wrapped in cold gray clouds,
which seem to have meant something unpleasant to the fishing craft, for
they have all vanished but two of the bolder sail. It rains a little
and then stops. A wind, heavy with the salt breath of the sea, rises
steadily, and bemoans itself in all the angles and projections of
the house. The lanterns of the veranda, which have not been lighted
for a week, rattle dolefully in the blast. Under them, the long line
of rocking-chairs in which a quarter of a mile of ladies used to sit
and gossip together stretches emptily away. The wind pushes against
the tall backs of the chairs, and they rock softly to and fro, as if
the ghosts of the gossipers invisibly filled them, and still inaudibly
babbled on. Where some of the chairs are grouped facing one another,
the effect is very creepy. Will they keep up their spectral colloquies
all winter?
I escape from this eery sight to my own room, and in the corridor,
three uptown blocks away, I behold a small chambermaid balancing
herself against a large bucket as she wavers slowly down. It is tragic.
The wind rises, and by mid-afternoon blows half a gale. The sea
froths and roars and tumbles on the beach, and far out the serried
breakers toss their white-caps against the sky-line, like so many cooks
abandoning the hotel kitchen.
About three o’clock, the life-guard of the bathing-beach, having cast
his derby and cut-away, appears with three other men in tights, and
pulls in the life-lines and the buoys. Now the Dump will have the ocean
for its own.
A stranded boat which lies on the beach to the northward came ashore
in the gale last night from some of the fishermen. It is in good
condition, and if the trains should stop running before noon to-morrow
we can be taken off in it. Eighteen of our number went away this
morning; and there are now but four of us left. We could easily get
away in that boat.