He could only cover his eyes and crawl under the
bushes in such poor lee as he could find; and there, with the first lull
of the storm, heavy with exhaustion and despair, he fell asleep and slept
until far into the day. When he awoke the tempest was over.
Even more completely the tumult within him was quieted. He rose and stood
forth mute in spirit as in speech; humbled, yet content, in the
consciousness that having miserably failed first to save himself and then
to rue himself back to destruction, the hurricane had been his deliverer.
It had spared his supplies, his ammunition, his weapons, only hiding them
deeper under the dune sands; but scarce a vestige of his camp remained and
of his raft nothing. As once more from the highest sand-ridge he looked
down upon the sea weltering in the majestic after-heavings of its passion,
at the eastern beach booming under the shock of its lofty rollers, and
then into the sky still gray with the endless flight of southward-hurrying
scud, he felt the stir of a new attachment to them and his wild prison,
and pledged alliance with them thenceforth.
VI
Here, in giving me his account, Gregory asked me if that sounded
sentimental. I said no, and thereupon he actually tried to apologize to me
as though I were a professional story-teller, for having had so few deep
feelings in the moments where the romancists are supposed to place them.
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