to may be as
ignorant on this point as he is in regard to the "wishes" of "heaven and
earth," we will attempt a brief description of the event which put such
a sudden stop to what may be called the Toc-baby-picnic.

For several days previously the weather had been rather cloudy, and
there had been a few showers; but this would not have checked the
proceedings if the wind had not risen so as to render it dangerous to
launch the canoes into the surf on the beach of Bounty Bay. As the day
advanced it blew a gale, and Toc congratulated himself on having
resisted the urgent advice of the volatile Dan McCoy to stick at
nothing.

About sunset the gale increased to a hurricane. John Adams, with
several of the older youths, went to the edge of the precipice, near the
eastern part of the village, where a deep ravine ran up into the
mountains. There, under the shelter of a rock, they discussed the
situation.

"Lucky that you didn't go, Toc," said Adams, pointing at the sea, whose
waves were lashed and churned into seething foam.

"Yes, thanks be to God," replied Thursday.

"It will blow harder yet, I think," said Charlie Christian, who had
grown into a tall stripling of about seventeen. He resembled his father
in the bright expression of his handsome face and in the vigour of his
lithe frame.

"Looks like it, Charlie. It minds me o' a regular typhoon we had when
you was quite a babby, that blew down a lot o' trees, an' almost took
the roofs off our huts."

As he spoke it seemed as if the wind grew savage at having been
recognised, for it came round the corner of the rock with a tremendous
roar, and nearly swept Adams's old seafaring hat into the rising sea.

"I'd ha' bin sorry to lose 'ee," muttered John, as he thrust the glazed
and battered covering well down on his brows. "I wore you in the
_Bounty_, and I expect, with care, to make you last out my time, an'
leave you as a legacy to my son George."

"Look-out, father!" shouted Matt Quintal and Jack Mills in the same
breath.

The whole party crouched close in beside the rock, and looked anxiously
upwards, where a loud rending sound was going on. Another moment and a
large cocoa-nut palm, growing in an exposed situation, was wrenched from
its hold and hurled like a feather over the cliffs, carrying a mass of
earth and stones along with it.

"It's well the rock overhangs a bit, or we'd have got the benefit o'
that shower," said Adams. "Come, boys, it's clear