Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/562

558 under some of the smaller cottages and drag them farther back upon the beach before the waves demolished them: while still others hurriedly removed their furniture in wagons, abandoning the buildings to their fate.

A few men stood under the corner of a partially undermined summer residence and struggled in vain to erect a plank bulwark which would stop the advancing sea, while the surging waters nearly swept them from their feet. Crowds of spectators waded knee-deep through the foam blown up from the surf zone by the winds, and watched the water of the sea leap high above three-story dwellings where waves were breaking against some resisting bulkhead. Many observed with anxiety the attack of the sea upon the beach under the large Octagon Hotel, and shortly before noon saw the great building collapse and become, in a short time, a tangled mass of splintered wood rising and falling with the waves. Occasional waves sent water across the narrow bar, the streets of Seabright were inundated, and the unusually high tide which accompanied the storm kept many houses on the lower, back