" All the same,
we should like to hear of a stout sea-wall as well.
Once again the elements caused us alarm. A heavy gale got up in the
evening of February 19th, and roared all night upon the roof of the
hotel, tearing up the fluttering tiles in patches, and sending them
adrift through the air, till the master who slept under the leads, in
charge of the top storey, began to doubt whether the straining roof would
last overhead till morning. It was small consolation that this time he
and his neighbours should at least "die a dry death," so the inmates of
the floor were summoned from their beds in the small hours to spend the
rest of the night in a bivouack on the ground-floor. One or another of
those luckless youngsters will, in after days, remember, as a cheerful
incident, the arrival on the scene of the Headmaster, with a store of
biscuits and such supplies as could be requisitioned at the moment, to
provision the watch. Your schoolboy, he reflected, is hungry at all
times; what must he be at night when dragged from bed to save his life,
and forced to sit up, rather cold and very empty, for several hours
before daybreak.
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