, and by a
vigorous effort he tore the net from off him and sat upright. Clasping
his numbed and swollen hands together, he turned his face and almost
sightless eyes to heaven.

"May this awful trial serve as a partial forgiveness of my sins, and
make me a better man!"

He paused, and laid his heavy arms around the child, while warm and
grateful tears trickled down his cheeks. Slowly, and like a drunken man,
his feet sought the sand, and then, weak, trembling, and faint, he
staggered along the path, the boy tripping lightly before him, till he
fell exhausted on the floor of the chapel.

"Water, my Henri! water!"

The child scooped it out from the stone bowl with his tiny hands and
sprinkled it on his friend's face.

"There, that will suffice, my brave boy! Lay your cheek to mine!"

What a sight it was--that dark, swollen, yet powerful frame lying on the
coral pavement, and the innocent child, like a dewdrop on the leaf of a
red tropical flower, nestling close beside it!

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HURRICANE.

"'Twas off the Wash--the sun went down--the sea looked black and
grim,
For stormy clouds with murky fleece were mustering at the brim;
Titanic shades! enormous gloom! as if the solid night
Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light!
It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye,
With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky!"

Past a September noon. The great canopy of dark, murky clouds fell lower
and lower, until they nearly touched the earth, wrapping as in a blanket
the single cocoa-nut-tree on the crag, and shutting out the light and
air of heaven as they settled over the noxious lagoon, the mangrove
thickets, and pure inlet. The sea-birds came screaming in from seaward,
fluttering their wide-spread wings in the sultry atmosphere, and
alighting on the smooth rocks, where they furled their pinions and put
their heads together. The flying-fish no longer skimmed over the waves,
and the dolphin and shark sank deep down in the blue water, or lay still
and quiet beside the coral groves. The rolling, swelling ocean of the
tropic, with its glassy, greasy surface unruffled by the faintest air,
rolled heavily on until it struck the coral ledge, when, with a dull,
heavy roar, it broke over in creamy foam, and came sluggishly in to the
sandy beach. There the tiny waves lashed the shelly strand, and all was
still again. No sun; no breeze; and even the birds, and se