owed the
sand hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with
slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from
another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere.
But the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot,
and houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.

As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail boat?"
asked the Sister.

"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they
were about a mile outside of the reef."

"I will go and see."

"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."

"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.

She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual
timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her
uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her
purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally
wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the light-house.
The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the
door of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and
gained the light room, where the glass of the windows was all
shattered, and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of
birds, swept along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none
of them falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the
air as they sped onward, until they struck against some high object,
which broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered
casement, Sister St. Luke gazed out to sea. The wind was blowing
fiercely and the waves were lashed to fury. The sky was inky black. The
reef was under water, save one high knob of its backbone, and to that
two dark objects were clinging. Further down she saw the wreck of the
boat driving before the gale. Pedro was over in the village; the tide
was coming in over the high sea, and night was approaching. She walked
quickly down the rough stone stairs, stepped into the water again, and
waded across where the paroquet boat had been driven against the wall
of the house, baled it out with one of Melvyna's pans, and then,
climbing in from the window of the sitting-room, she hoisted the sail,
and in a moment was out on the dark sea.

Melvyna had ascended to the top of the ridge, and when the sail came
into view beyond the house she fell down on her kn