We do not know how our defences would have stood the test of battle. They
were not put to the proof, for the wind, veering to the north that
morning, and blowing strongly all day, reduced again the volume of the
water in the bay, and the following tides came and went harmlessly. But
had the morrow repeated the terrors of this day, we should hardly have
been up to witness them, for (_proh pudor_!) we rewarded ourselves for
our exertions by a lie-a-bed next morning in place of early school.
Elsewhere the storm-wave had worked more havoc. At Ynyslas, a flock of
one hundred and fifteen sheep were caught in their pastures, and drowned,
the farmer rescuing only eleven. The cottagers were driven to their
lofts, while the tide snatched away their furniture, doors,
window-frames, and tables, and strewed them along the railway banks.
There was flotsam and jetsam on what was now once more the coast-line at
the village of Taliesin, where in old days the bard's cradle had been
washed ashore; here one poor woman recovered her parlour-table of heavy
oak; her chairs had travelled farther yet to the door of a farmhouse in
the extreme corner of the marsh.
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