AN ICE SCENE — STORM ENDS. 143 



floor, inside the building, has fallen out entirely, — it is a wonder 

 what has kept the whole building from going. Great masses of ice 

 cover the ruins ; the sides of the stage house that still remain 

 standing are covered with sheets of heavy frozen matter, while huge 

 blocks of icicles hang from the edge of the roof. The railings of 

 the stage beyond hang with icy masses that fall in solid sheets 

 nearly to the ground. Everything seems covered with this dull, 

 opaque, heavy saltwater ice. We see before us a sea of frozen, 

 wooden matter. We spend all the day in cleaning and clearing 

 away, and in trying to find the extent of the damage done ; in 

 relaying the broken foundations, strengthening the beams, raising 

 the broken and bending, though not yet fallen, portions of the 

 platform, and in general repairs. Night finds us more cheery, and 

 sanguine that one or two more days' work will right matters again. 

 Wednesday the 24th. To-day the storm is fully over, and the 

 men have labored hard at clearing away the rubbish, and once 

 more righting things. The wind has been mostly from the north. 

 The water has calmed down once more, its surface stirred only by 

 the low, long hnes of wave that occasionally advance and break 

 upon the shoreline everywhere around the island ; the whole water 

 is still colored a dark clay green, an evidence that at this point the 

 sea had been stirred to its very depths. The magistrate says that 

 he has never seen it of so intense a color during the twenty years 

 he has resided on the coast. Everywhere upon the shore are clams 

 and mussels, shells of many different varieties, starfish, echini, and 

 holothurians of many kinds, besides innumerable other species of 

 sea dwelling animals. The beaches were every\vhere literally cov- 

 ered with these treasures of the deep, while the children brought them 

 home by the armful. Beautifully colored starfish, some of them 

 immense fellows a foot or more from end to end of arms, and 

 brown, red, and gray, both light colored and dark, all told of an 

 unusual commotion in the elements of both air and sea. By 

 this time the sky had regained its usual and natural hue of hazy 

 blue, with scarce a cloud save in the far horizon where a dull, heavy 

 shadow of the hurricane hung like a ghost or ghoul that seemed 



