m up."

Men were busy at work on the decks of all the schooners. There was a
great clanking of chains being overhauled, and now one craft, and
now another, hove in, veered, and dropped a second anchor. Like the
_Malahini_, those that had third anchors were preparing to drop them
when the wind showed what quarter it was to blow from.

The roar of the big surf continually grew though the lagoon lay in the
mirror-like calm.

There was no sign of life where Parlay's big house perched on the sand.
Boat and copra-sheds and the sheds where the shell was stored were
deserted.

"For two cents I'd up anchors and get out," Grief said. "I'd do it
anyway if it were open sea. But those chains of atolls to the north and
east have us pocketed. We've a better chance right here. What do you
think, Captain Warfield?"

"I agree with you, though a lagoon is no mill-pond for riding it out.
I wonder where she's going to start from? Hello! There goes one of
Parlay's copra-sheds."

They could see the grass-thatched shed lift and collapse, while a froth
of foam cleared the crest of the sand and ran down to the lagoon.

"Breached across!" Mulhall exclaimed. "That's something for a starter.
There she comes again!"

The wreck of the shed was now flung up and left on the sand-crest, A
third wave buffeted it into fragments which washed down the slope toward
the lagoon.

"If she blow I would as be cooler yet," Hermann grunted. "No longer can
I breathe. It is damn hot. I am dry like a stove."

He chopped open a drinking cocoanut with his heavy sheath-knife and
drained the contents. The rest of them followed his example, pausing
once to watch one of Parlay's shell sheds go down in ruin. The barometer
now registered 29:50.

"Must be pretty close to the centre of the area of low pressure," Grief
remarked cheerfully. "I was never through the eye of a hurricane before.
It will be an experience for you, too, Mulhall. From the speed the
barometer's dropped, it's going to be a big one."

Captain Warfield groaned, and all eyes drew to him. He was looking
through the glasses down the length of the lagoon to the southeast.

"There she comes," he said quietly.

They did not need glasses to see. A flying film, strangely marked,
seemed drawing over the surface of the lagoon. Abreast of it, along the
atoll, travelling with equal speed, was a stiff bending of the cocoanut
palms and a blur of flying leaves. The front of the wind on the water
was a so