"
* * * * *
Truly, in Eyemouth it is not alone spray that drives. So close a
neighbour is the protecting sea-wall to some of the houses that turn
weather-beaten backs on the bay, that at high tide during a
north-easterly gale the giant seas, breaking against the wall, burst
also clear over the houses, hurling themselves in torrents of icy water
into the street beyond. And up the width of one little street that runs
to the bay, and past its barricaded doors, you may see sometimes billows
that have overleapt the wall come charging, to ebb with angry swish and
long-drawn clatter of shingle as the waves suck back. It is a strange
sight, and it causes one to wonder what manner of men they are who dwell
here, who draw their living from the bosom of a sea that thus harshly
treats its children. Yet it is a sea that can be kindly enough; and in
the long, golden summer evenings, when the brown-sailed fishing-boats in
endless procession draw out from the "haven under the hill," to vanish
seaward in the deepening twilight, you would scarce believe that a thing
so gentle could be guilty of treachery, or ever could arise in sudden
mad frenzy to slay those who had trusted it.
Yet that was what happened that terrible Friday, the 14th of October
1881.
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