I stood a long while on the cope watching the sea below me; I hear its
dull, monotonous roar at this moment below the shrieking of the wind;
and there came ever recurring to my mind the verse I am so fond of:--
"But yet the Lord that is on high
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is
Or great sea-billows are."
The thunder at the wall when it first struck--the rush along ever
growing higher--the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet above
you--and the "noise of many waters," the roar, the hiss, the "shrieking"
among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet. I watched if
it threw the big stones at the wall; but it never moved them.
_Monday._--The end of the work displays gaps, cairns of ten ton blocks,
stones torn from their places and turned right round. The damage above
water is comparatively little: what there may be below, on _ne sait pas
encore_. The roadway is torn away, cross-heads, broken planks tossed
here and there, planks gnawn and mumbled as if a starved bear had been
trying to eat them, planks with spates lifted from them as if they had
been dressed with a rugged plane, one pile swaying to and fro clear of
the bottom, the rails in one place sunk a foot at least. This was not a
great storm, the waves were light and short. Yet when we are standing at
the office, I felt the ground beneath me _quail_ as a huge roller
thundered on the work at the last year's cross wall.
How could _noster amicus Q. maximus_ appreciate a storm at Wick? It
requires a little of the artistic temperament, of which Mr. T. S.,[6]
C.E., possesses some, whatever he may say. I can't look at it
practically however: that will come, I suppose, like grey hair or coffin
nails.
Our pole is snapped: a fortnight's work and the loss of the Norse
schooner all for nothing!--except experience and dirty clothes.--Your
affectionate son,