noon
Now they piped and whistled with eldritch screech round the corners of the house -- now they thundered down the chimney -- and now they shook the door and rattled the casement -- and anon mustering their forces with wild ado , seemed to career over the house , and sail high up into the murky air . The dash of the rising tide came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge of heavy artillery , seeming to shake the very house , and the spray borne by the wind dashed whizzing against the window-panes . Zephaniah , rising from supper , drew up the little stand that had the family Bible on it , and the three old time-worn people sat themselves as seriously down to evening worship as if they had been an extensive congregation . They raised the old psalm-tune which our fathers called `` Complaint , '' and the cracked , wavering voices of the women , with the deep , rough bass of the old sea-captain , rose in the uproar of the storm with a ghostly , strange wildness , like the scream of the curlew or the wailing of the wind : -- `` Spare us , O Lord , aloud we pray , Nor let our sun go down at noon : Thy years are an eternal day , And must thy children die so soon ! '' Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and exalted part which in ancient days used to be called counter , and which wailed and gyrated in unimaginable heights of the scale , much as you may hear a shrill , fine-voiced wind over a chimney-top ; but altogether , the deep and earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the storm with their quaint minor key , had something singularly impressive . When the singing was over , Zephaniah read to the accompaniment of wind and sea , the words of poetry made on old Hebrew shores , in the dim , gray dawn of the world : -- `` The voice of the Lord is upon the waters ; the God of glory thundereth ; the Lord is upon many waters . The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh .