These did not look to be very large until she noticed the twin piers
reaching out from the river's mouth. Each billow, as it came in,
rose sullenly above them, broke tempestuously to overwhelm the
entire structure of their ends, and ripped inshore along their
lengths, the crest submerging as it ran every foot of the massive
structures. The piers and the light-houses at their ends looked
like little toys, and the compact black crowd of people on the shore
below were as small as Bobby's tin soldiers.
"Look there--out farther!" pointed Mina.
Carroll looked, and rose to her feet in excitement.
Three little toy ships--or so they seemed compared to the mountains
of water--lay broadside-to, just inside the farthest line of
breakers. Two were sailing schooners. These had been thrown on
their beam ends, their masts pointing at an angle toward the beach.
Each wave, as it reached, stirred them a trifle, then broke in a
deluge of water that for a moment covered their hulls completely
from sight. With a mighty suction the billow drained away, carrying
with it wreckage. The third vessel was a steam barge. She, too,
was broadside to the seas, but had caught in some hole in the bar so
that she lay far down by the head.
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