e air has remained in its ominous quietude
over the surface of the ocean, becoming warmer and warmer, gathering
strength for its devastating career. The water vapor has risen higher
and higher. Dense cumulus clouds have formed, the upper surfaces of
which have caught all the sun's heat, intensifying the unstable
equilibrium of the air. The powers of the tempest have grown steadily in
all evil majesty of destructiveness. Day by day, then hour by hour, then
minute by minute, the awful force has been generated, as steam is
generated by fierce furnace fires under a ship's boilers.

"Why, Stuart, it has been figured that the air in a hurricane a hundred
miles in diameter and a mile high, weighs as much as half-a-million
Atlantic liners, and this incredibly huge mass is driven at twice the
speed of the fastest ship afloat. In these gusts, which come with the
rain squalls, the wind will rise to a velocity of a hundred and twenty
miles an hour. It strikes!"

A crack of thunder deafened all, and green and violet lightning winked
and flickered continuously. The hiss of the rain, the shrieking of the
wind and the snapping crackle of the thunder defied speech. The heat in
the hurricane wing was terrific, but Stuart shivered with cold. It was
the cold of terror, the cold of helplessness, the cold of being
powerless in such an awful evidence of the occasional malignity of
Nature.

Between the approach of night and the closing in of the clouds, an inky
darkness prevailed, though in the intervals between the outbursts of
lightning, the sky had a mottled copper and green coloration, the copper
being the edges of low raincloud-masses, and the green, the flying scud
above.

Squall followed squall in ever-closer succession, the uproar changing
constantly from the shriek of the hundred-mile wind in the squall to the
dull roar of the fifty-mile wind in between. The thunder crackled,
without any after-rumble, and the trembling of the ground could be felt
from the pounding of the terrific waves half a mile away. Then, in a
long-drawn-out descending wail, like the howl of a calling coyote, the
hurricane died down to absolute stillness.

"Whew!" exclaimed Stuart, in relief. "I'm glad that's over."

"Over!" the scientist exclaimed. "The worst is to come! We're in the eye
of the hurricane. Look!"

Overhead the sky was almost clear, so clear that the stars could be
seen, but the whirl of air, high overhead, made them twinkle so that
they s