CHAPTER XX.
A WRECK AND SOME WRECKERS.
Dismally barren and lonesome was that desolate bar between the bay and the ocean.

Here and there it swelled up into great drifts and mounds of sand, which were almost large enough to be called hills; but nowhere did it show a tree, or a bush, or even a patch of grass.

Annie Foster found herself getting melancholy, as she gazed upon it, and thought of how the winds must sometimes sweep across it, laden with sea-spray and rain and hail, or with the bitter sleet and blinding snow of winter.
"Dabney," she said, "was the storm very severe here last night and yesterday ?" "Worse than it was over on our side of the bay, ten times." "Were there any vessels wrecked ?" "Most likely, but it's too soon to know just where." At that moment "The Swallow" was running around a sandy point, jutting out into the bay from the foot of the highest mound on the bar, not half a mile from the light-house, and only twice as far from the low wooden roof of the "wrecking-station," where, as Dab had explained to his guests, the lifeboats and other apparatus of all sorts were kept safely housed.

The piles of drifted sand had for some time prevented the brightest eyes on board "The Swallow" from seeing any thing to seaward; but now, as they came around the point and a broad level lay before them, Ham Morris sprang to his feet in sudden excitement, as he exclaimed,-- "In the breakers! Why, she must have been a three-master! It's all up with her now." "Look along the shore!" shouted Dab.

"Some of 'em saved, anyhow.