d quite died down,
leaving a suffocation in the air that is difficult to explain; but I've
felt something like it on a sultry summer day when the sky is black with
slowly advancing clouds, when the birds have become too awed to chirp
and every leaf in the trees hangs motionless. It is in these suspenses
of unpleasant expectation, when at any moment the heavens will open with
a hissing smash of fire and nature be turned to fury, that one breathes
heavily. There is no other feeling like it, except the drag of torturing
minutes before being called to make a speech, or to be whistled over the
top into No Man's Land.

Our prow grated on the sand and in silence we began to unload. Back from
the sloping beach grew a fringe of small machineel trees and palms; the
beach and they, as well as I could judge, forming a kind of
amphitheater to the water.

My men wanted to raise the canvas into a make-shift tent before
returning for the second load, but I thought better of this and had them
leave it as it was, wrapped about our guns and stowed with the other
things beneath the palms. Until daylight showed how well our position
might be screened from the islands, it were a short sighted business to
stretch a tell-tale piece of white duck that could be seen for miles.

Already there were eerie whisperings of some disturbance in the sky.
From the black forest far behind us could be detected faint restless
noises, as if a myriad agitated spirits were scurrying hither and
thither whipping their wings against the branches. Something more than
an ordinary man's size blow was coming out of the southeast, so I
tumbled the crew into their boat, charging them to pull right heartily
and bring back Tommy, at least, before too late.

They must have got close to the _Whim_ when a force, as sudden as it was
at the moment unexpected, almost lifted me off my feet. Indeed, had I
not possessed the presence of mind to fall flat upon the beach I should
have gone kittering. In half a second the heavens were cluttered not
only with screaming and tumbling winds but branches of large trees
driven along as straws. I dug my toes and fingers into the sand,
flattening out for dear life. Close upon the head of this hurricane came
the deluge of rain, cloudburst after cloudburst. Then lightning was
unchained, veritable shocks of fire, and no thunder out of hell could
have been more appalling.

For perhaps a minute I had not been given a chance to think of the sm