-rip.

Stuart began to feel a little frightened.

"Do you really think it will come here?"

"Yes," said the botanist gravely, "I do. In fact I am sure of it.
Barbados is full in the hurricane track, you know."

"But why?" queried the boy. "I've always heard of West Indian
hurricanes. Do they only happen here? I don't see why they should come
here more than any other place."

"Do you know why they come at all?"

Stuart thought for a moment.

"No," he answered, "I don't know that I do. I never thought anything
about it. I always figured that storms just happened, somehow."

"Nothing 'just happens,'" was the stern rebuke. "Hark!"

He held up his finger for silence.

A low rumbling, sounding something like the pounding of heavy surf on a
beach heard at a distance, and closely akin to the sound made by Niagara
Falls, seemed to fill the air. And, across the sound, came cracks like
distant pistol shots heard on a clear day.

The white arch rose slowly and just underneath it appeared an arch of
darker cloud, almost black.

At the same moment, came a puff of the cool wind from the north.

"We will have it in less than two hours," said the scientist. "It is a
good thing that all afternoon I have had the men and women on the place
nailing the shutters tight and fastening everything that can be
fastened. We may only get the edge of the hurricane, we may get the
center. There is no telling. An island is not like a ship, which can
direct its course so as to escape the terrible vortex of the center.
We've got to stay and take it."

"But has every hurricane a center?" queried the boy, a little relieved
by the thought that the storm would not come for two hours. In that
time, he foolishly thought, it might have spent its force. He did not
know that hurricanes possess a life of their own which endures not less
than a week, and in one or two cases, as long as a month.

"You wouldn't ask whether every hurricane has a center," the scientist
replied, "if you knew a little more about them. As there is nothing for
us to do but wait, and as it is foolish to go to the hurricane wing
until the time of danger, I might as well explain to you what a
hurricane really is. Then, if you live through it----" Stuart jumped at
the sudden idea of the imminent danger--"you'll be able to write to your
paper about it, intelligently."

"I'd really like to know," declared Stuart, leaning forward eagerly.

"Well," said his informant, "I'll ma