IN PERILS BY SEA. 
145 
tection of themselves and their homes by putting 
up hurricane shutters, fastening doors with 
planks roughly nailed across them, and securing 
all the movable timber about the premises. A 
sensation akin to awe steals across the mind, as 
the now imprisoned family sits wrapped in a 
silence which is not peace to catch the first 
murmurings of the rising wind. In harbour 
a rapid clearance has been effected, and every 
ship which could be got ready has already been 
taken out far off to sea, to avoid the frightful 
havoc which a crowded port involves at such 
a time. 
At Port Louis, a few years ago, an eye-witness 
records the effect of a sudden visit from one of 
these circular storms. There had not been suffi¬ 
cient warning to enable the vessels to get free 
from their moorings and to stand out from the 
shore, and in a few hours nothing remained but 
a crowd of broken and dismantled wrecks, flung 
hither and thither, as balls are tossed by a child, 
and crushed and battered by contact with one 
another in the midst of the hurricane. The 
scene resembled most of all the gathering of a 
noble fleet after a severe naval action. The 
town also appeared as if it had been swept from 
end to end by a bombardment. Houses were 
overthrown or unroofed, gardens w T ere uprooted 
and bared of every vestige of form or beauty, 
