five o'clock
The occasion was not one of absorbing interest to Isaac . By the time the table was cleared and the kitchen once more in order not only were the windows on the sea side of the house roughly shaken by the rising gale , but the sand caught from the dunes was being whirled against their panes . The tide , too , egged on by the storm , had crept up the slope of the dunes , the spray drenching the grass-tufts . At five o'clock the wind blew forty miles an hour at sundown it had increased to fifty ; at eight o'clock it bowled along at sixty . Morgan , who had been to the village for supplies , reported that the tide was over the dock at Barnegat and that the roof of the big bathing-house at Beach Haven had been ripped off and landed on the piazza . He had had all he could do to keep his feet and his basket while crossing the marsh on his way back to the station . Then he added : `` There 's a lot o ' people there yit .