but when the devouring wave rolled over the land and numenor toppled to its fall , then he would have been overwhelmed and would have deemed it the lesser grief to perish , for no wrench of death could be more bitter than the loss and agony of that day ; but the great wind took him , wilder than any wind that men had known , roaring from the west , and it swept his ships far away ; and it rent their sails and snapped their masts , hunting the unhappy men like straws upon the water .