CHAPTER XVI
THE CYCLONE
When they awoke next morning the day was dark. A solid roof of cloud,lead-coloured and without a ripple on it, lay over the sky, almost tothe horizon. There was not a breath of wind, and the birds flew wildlyabout as if disturbed by some unseen enemy in the wood.
As Dick lit the fire to prepare the breakfast, Emmeline walked up anddown, holding her baby to her breast; she felt restless and uneasy.
As the morning wore on the darkness increased; a breeze rose up, andthe leaves of the breadfruit trees pattered together with the sound ofrain falling upon glass. A storm was coming, but there was somethingdifferent in its approach to the approach of the storms they hadalready known.
As the breeze increased a sound filled the air, coming from far awaybeyond the horizon. It was like the sound of a great multitude ofpeople, and yet so faint and vague was it that sudden bursts of thebreeze through the leaves above would drown it utterly. Then it ceased,and nothing could be heard but the rocking of the branches and thetossing of the leaves under the increasing wind, which was now blowingsharply and fiercely and with a steady rush dead from the west,fretting the lagoon, and sending clouds and masses of foam right overthe reef. The sky that had been so leaden and peaceful and like a solidroof was now all in a hurry, flowing eastward like a great turbulentriver in spate.
And now, again, one could hear the sound in the distance—the thunderof the captains of the storm and the shouting; but still so faint, sovague, so indeterminate and unearthly that it seemed like the sound ina dream.
Emmeline sat amidst the ferns on the floor cowed and dumb, holding thebaby to her breast. It was fast asleep. Dick stood at the doorway. Hewas disturbed in mind, but he did not show it.
The whole beautiful island world had now taken on the colour of ashesand the colour of lead. Beauty had utterly vanished, all seemed sadnessand distress.
The cocoa-palms, under the wind that had lost its steady rush and wasnow blowing in hurricane blasts, flung themselves about in all theattitudes of distress; and whoever has seen a tropical storm will knowwhat a cocoa-palm can express by its movements under the lash of thewind.
Fortunately the house was so placed that it was protected by the wholedepth of the grove between it and the lagoon and fortunately, too, itwas sheltered by the dense foliage of the breadfruit, for suddenly,with a crash of thunder as if the hammer of Thor had been flung fromsky to earth, the clouds split and the rain came down in a greatslanting wave. It roared on the foliage above, which, bending leaf onleaf, made a slanting roof from which it rushed in a steady sheet-likecascade.
Dick had darted into the house, and was now sitting beside Emmeline,who was shivering and holding the child, which had awakened at thesound of the thunder.
For an hour they sat, the rain ceasing and coming again, the thundershaking earth and sea, and the wind passing overhead with a piercing,monotonous cry.
Then all at once the wind dropped, the rain ceased, and a pale spectrallight, like the light of dawn, fell before the doorway.
“It’s over!” cried Dick, making to get up.
“Oh, listen!” said Emmeline, clinging to him, and holding the baby tohis breast as if the touch of him would give it protection. She haddivined that there was something approaching worse than a storm.
Then, listening in the silence, away from the other side of the island,they heard a sound like the droning of a great top.
It was the centre of the cyclone approaching.
A cyclone is a circular storm: a storm in the form of a ring. This ringof hurricane travels across the ocean with inconceivable speed andfury, yet its centre is a haven of peace.
As they listened the sound increased, sharpened, and became a tang thatpierced the ear-drums: a sound that shook with hurry and speed,increasing, bringing with it the bursting and crashing of trees, andbreaking at last overhead in a yell that stunned the brain like theblow of a bludgeon. In a second the house was torn away, and they wereclinging to the roots of the breadfruit, deaf, blinded, half-lifeless.
The terror and the prolonged shock of it reduced them from thinkingbeings to the level of frightened animals whose one instinct ispreservation.
How long the horror lasted they could not tell, when, like a madman whopauses for a moment in the midst of his struggles and standsstock-still, the wind ceased blowing, and there was peace. The centreof the cyclone was passing over the island.
Looking up, one saw a marvellous sight. The air was full of birds,butterflies, insects—all hanging in the heart of the storm andtravelling with it under its protection.
Though the air was still as the air of a summer’s day, from north,south, east, and west, from every point of the compass, came the yellof the hurricane.
There was something shocking in this.
In a storm one is so beaten about by the wind that one has no time tothink: one is half stupefied. But in the dead centre of a cyclone oneis in perfect peace. The trouble is all around, but it is not here. Onehas time to examine the thing like a tiger in a cage, listen to itsvoice and shudder at its ferocity.
The girl, holding the baby to her breast, sat up gasping. The baby hadcome to no harm; it had cried at first when the thunder broke, but nowit seemed impassive, almost dazed. Dick stepped from under the tree andlooked at the prodigy in the air.
The cyclone had gathered on its way sea-birds and birds from the land;there were gulls, electric white and black man-of-war birds,butterflies, and they all seemed imprisoned under a great drifting domeof glass. As they went, travelling like things without volition and ina dream, with a hum and a roar the south-west quadrant of the cycloneburst on the island, and the whole bitter business began over again.
It lasted for hours, then towards midnight the wind fell; and when thesun rose next morning he came through a cloudless sky, without a traceof apology for the destruction caused by his children the winds. Heshowed trees uprooted and birds lying dead, three or four canesremaining of what had once been a house, the lagoon the colour of apale sapphire, and a glass-green, foam-capped sea racing in thunderagainst the reef.