Mben tbe fflortb Sea Kages is 



preserve the crumbling cave-eaten cliffs from the 

 onslaught of the sea. The storm played fearful havoc 

 upon it. While the wind wrenched off the heads of 

 the tall, substantial lamp-standards and shivered 

 them to fragments, the waves snapped the thick, 

 heavy iron stanchions on the edge of the wall, and 

 even tore some of them from their bed of solid masonry. 



At the New Pier its construction is one of the 

 memories of my boyhood the mountainous masses of 

 water made sport with the loose giant blocks of con- 

 crete. The North Sea storm-waves toy with mere 

 tons. 



Through the spray-mist I had wonderful glimpses 

 of the raging sea attacking this long, massive break- 

 water. As I stood in the wind, fascinated, the ground 

 beneath my feet quaked with the perpetual impact 

 between the forces of nature and the works of man. 

 The great creamy breakers rushed out of the haze 

 with a speed that would seem incredible to an inlander. 

 Straight for the pier they went, and struck the high, 

 smooth, curved wall with a noise that resembled the 

 explosion of a huge shell. Then up, up they would 

 shoot, eighty or a hundred feet into the air with the 

 swiftness of a cannon-shot, and before they could 

 descend again the wind would blow them into fine 

 spray and sweep the mist with a seething hiss into the 

 calm water beyond. Those waves all chaotic 

 which were not thus dissipated, or which did not 

 make a clean sweep of the pier, would rebound from 

 the glistening wall and would meet another oncoming 

 wave (perhaps a confusion of two or three of them) 

 with a crash like violent overhead thunder. Such 

 collisions invariably resulted in a tremendous upheaval 



