Here he lay for more than an hour, the rage of
the tempest continually growing, the heavens in a constant pulsing glare
of lightnings, their terrific thunders smiting and bellowing round and
round its echoing vault, and the very island seeming at times to stagger
back and recover again as it braced itself against the fearful onsets of
the wind. Snuggling in his sailcloth burrow, he complacently recalled an
earlier storm like this, which he and Sweetheart, the only other time they
ever were here, had tranquilly weathered in this same lagoon. On the
mainland, in that storm, cane- and rice-fields had been laid low and half
destroyed, houses had been unroofed, men had been killed. A woman and a
boy, under a pecan tree, were struck by lightning; and three men who had
covered themselves with a tarpaulin on one of the wharves in New Orleans
were blown with it into the Mississippi, poor fellows, and were drowned; a
fact worthy of second consideration in the present juncture.
This second thought had hardly been given it before he crept hastily from
his refuge and confronted the gale in quick alarm. The hurricane was
veering to southward. Let it shift but a point or two more, and its entire
force would sweep the lagoon and its beach.
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