about five
in the morning
It is that back-suck of the pebbles that you may hear for miles inland , even at Dorchester , on still nights long after the winds that caused it have sunk , and which makes people turn in their beds , and thank God they are not fighting with the sea on Moonfleet beach . But on this third of November there was no wreck , only such a wind as I have never known before , and only once since . All night long the tempest grew fiercer , and I think no one in Moonfleet went to bed ; for there was such a breaking of tiles and glass , such a banging of doon and rattling of shutters , that no sleep was possible , and we were afraid besides lest the chimneys should fall and crush us . The wind blew fiercest about five in the morning , and then some ran up the street calling out a new danger -- that the sea was breaking over the beach , and that all the place was like to be flooded . Some of the women were for flitting forthwith and climbing the down ; but Master Ratsey , who was going round with others to comfort people , soon showed us that the upper part of the village stood so high , that if the water was to get thither , there was no knowing if it would not cover Ridgedown itself . But what with its being a spring-tide , and the sea breaking clean over the great outer beach of pebbles -- a thing that had not happened for fifty years -- there was so much water piled up in the lagoon , that it passed its bounds and flooded all the sea meadows , and even the lower end of the street . So when day broke , there was the churchyard flooded , though 't was on rising ground , and the church itself standing up like a steep little island , and the water over the door-sill of the Why Not ?