The Argosy — page 166: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

152 In a@ West India Hurricane. — tell; but anywhere was better than staying to be buried in the ruins of the house. “With Julia in my arms, I made my way to the piazza, and from thence down a flight of steps to the ground. The moment I was clear of the house, such was the fury of the wind that I was taken nght off my legs, and I and my burden were carried some distance—I have no idea how far—but we seemed to be whirled along lke chaff. The next instant I came violently in contact with something, Julia was torn from my arms, and I lost my consciousness. . ‘Slowly my senses came back to me. The lightning had ceased, and the darkness was awful. A few minutes afterwards the deafening noise of the wind sank to a solemn murmur, or, more correctly speaking, to a distant roar, as the sound of a mighty wind rushing through an open vault. I was in the very centre of the vortex. ‘‘T ran about, calling wildly on Julia, but she did not answer. Shrieks, groans, and cries reached my ear from all quarters, and though I called loudly to my friends, I got no reply. ‘Suddenly three fiery meteors, one after the other, came coursing across the heavens, and plunged into the sea; and at the same time the wind, which had previously been blowing from the north-east and north, suddenly shifted to the west, and the hurricane again burst upon me, hurling before it thousands of objects of all descriptions. “For the space of half an hour, all I could do was to cling with desperate energy to a tree which I fortunately found near me. Time went on. Of poor Julia I could neither see nor hear anything, and of her fate, and of that of the rest of my friends, I was in total ignorance. To seek them now was impossible. The force of the wind was such that if I had once lost my hold, I should have been swept away like a feather. Independently of this, I was surrounded by dangers of all de- scnptions. During the flashing of the lightning, which was almost inces- sant, I could see that the air was full of the most dangerous missiles, any of which, if they had struck me, would have caused instant death ; trees up-rooted ; articles of furniture, tiles, beams, stones, and bricks, flew over my head in confused shoals. The noise caused by these, combined with the howling of the tempest; the noise of the descending torrents of rain ; the roaring and rattling of the thunder ; the continued crash of falling houses; the groans of the wounded and dying; the shrieks of despair, and the screams of women and children calling for help, formed an accumulation of terror-inspinng sounds—a hideous din, almost too great for human fortitude, and too vast for human concep- tion. ‘¢No one who has not witnessed such a scene, or been placed in such a situation, can form any adequate conception of its horrors. No one can imagine the mental agony, the painful intensity of my feelings, as groan after groan and shriek after shriek reached my ear, and I not comicaooks GO)