11 P.M.
For three days of November a white fog stood motionless over the country . All day and all night smothered booms and bangs away to the south-west told that the Fastnet gun was hard at work , and the sirens of the American liners uplifted their monstrous female voices as they felt their way along the coast of Cork . On the third afternoon the wind began to whine about the windows of Shreelane , and the barometer fell like a stone . At 11 P.M. the storm rushed upon us with the roar and the suddenness of a train ; the chimneys bellowed , the tall old house quivered , and the yelling wind drove against it , as a man puts his shoulder against a door to burst it in . We none of us got much sleep , and if Mrs. Cadogan is to be believed -- which experience assures me she is not -- she spent the night in devotional exercises , and in ministering to the panic-stricken kitchen-maid by the light of a Blessed candle . All that day the storm screamed on , dry-eyed ; at nightfall the rain began , and next morning , which happened to be Sunday , every servant in the house was a messenger of Job , laden with tales of leakages , floods , and fallen trees , and inflated with the ill-concealed glory of their kind in evil tidings . To Peter Cadogan , who had been to early Mass , was reserved the crowning satisfaction of reporting that a big vessel had gone on the rocks at Yokahn Point the evening before , and was breaking up fast ; it was rumoured that the crew had got ashore , but this feature , being favourable and uninteresting , was kept as much as possible in the background .