all
boat, or the _Whim_, but struggling to raise my head I stared through
the inky space eagerly awaiting the next flash. It came almost at once,
bringing into image the Cove as if a million green calcium lights were
focused there. This was but for an instant, yet such is the peculiar
effect of lightning that in the following blackness each detail of the
scene remained photographed upon my retinae. I saw the turbulent waters
apparently sweeping, as a mill race, out to sea; I saw a lone palm, that
had formerly stood in dignified solitude upon a nearby point of land,
now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella
turned inside out. I saw the _Whim_, greenish white in a greenish foam,
heeled over till her masts were all but on the waves and her mainsail,
half torn from its boom, snapping in the wind. In this fashion she was
being driven at breakneck speed across the Gulf. I thought--I tried to
think--that I had seen a small boat being dragged behind. Surely my men
had reached her!

But another flash, and still another, brought no greater assurance of
this. Each showed the yacht farther away, more blurred by rain, until
the distance became too great for me to make her out at all.

And then another sky-splitting flame photographed a sight that made my
blood congeal. I got but an instantaneous glimpse of it from the corner
of my eye before the world became wrapped again in darkness--but
something had been there, some huge, horrible monster was rising out of
the water and waddling toward me. I had seen two long dripping arms, or
feelers, extending in my direction. Crouched, with my nerves on fire, I
waited. The rifles and revolvers were wrapped in the canvas and could
not be reached in time; there was nothing to do but wait till this
thing touched me.

It seemed an age before the heavens split again, and then I gave a yell
wilder than the lashing rain, a yell of joy; for, staggering up the
beach was Smilax, true to his name with a grin so broad that the
greenish glare flickered on his teeth.

His sense of direction was either extremely acute or he possessed the
eyes of a cat, for in the following darkness I felt a hand grasp my
shoulder and push me toward the trees. Obediently I yielded. Then above
the storm I heard him tearing leaves from the smaller palms until, by
overlapping them against some bushes so they would be held by the wind,
he constructed a lean-to--in the circumstances a most creditable