lt these structures with hurricanes in view," he said. "This old
place will stand like a lighthouse. But you'll find it different in the
negro quarters. Alas! You will find mourning, everywhere."

At the boy's urgency the botanist agreed to lend him a horse and light
carriage and bade one of the negroes drive the lad to Bridgetown. A
hasty breakfast was swallowed, and, before six in the morning, Stuart
was on his way back across the island, his faithful typewriter beside
him.

They had not gone far before the real tragedy of the hurricane began to
show itself. Here was a house in splinters, and a group of people,
crying, with bowed heads, told that death had been there. The fields
were stripped bare. Near Corrington, a sugar factory showed a piece of
broken wall as all that remained. The road had been washed away by the
torrential floods.

In a small settlement, some negroes were working in a frenzy around a
mass of ruined cottages, from beneath which sounded dolorous cries. The
carriage stopped and both Stuart and the driver leaped out to aid. Ten
minutes' work unearthed three sufferers, two but slightly hurt, the
third with his leg broken. Alas! Others were not so fortunate.

Rising smoke, here and there, showed where fire had followed the
hurricane. Instead of the songs of labor in the fields, nothing was to
be heard but cries of distress. As the country grew more thickly
settled, on the way to Bridgetown, so was the suffering more intense and
the death-roll heavier. The drive, not more than twelve miles in all,
took over four hours, so littered was the road with fallen trees and the
debris of houses.

In the ruins of Bridgetown, Stuart met one of his newspaper friends, the
news instinct still inspiring him to secure every detail of the
catastrophe, though there was no newspaper office, the building being in
ruins and the presses buried under an avalanche of brick.

"The wires are down, too," said this newspaper man, "if I were you, I'd
chase right over to Trinidad. The mail steamer, which should have gone
last night, hasn't left yet, or, at least, I don't think she has. She
couldn't leave till the hurricane passed and the sea calmed down a bit.
At present, we are cut off from the world. It'll take two or three days,
a week, maybe, before the shore ends of the submarine cables are
recovered. If you can catch that steamer, you'll be in Trinidad this
evening."

"But suppose the cables are broken there, too?" su