a mile, I felt that I could go no further, for I
was pumped out, could scarcely breathe, and felt a strange, unnatural
faintness overcoming me--a not uncommon sensation experienced by many
people just before a hurricane or an earthquake.

"You must go on alone," I said, pantingly, to Yorke; "leave me here.
I'll be all right, even if I have to stop here a month of Sundays. I
can't starve in such a place as this."

Pitching his own and my rifle up on the bank above high water mark, he
seized me and lifted me up on his back, telling me to hold on, as he
meant to make a big try for the boat. It was no use my protesting--he
set off again at a steady run, my weight apparently impeding his
progress no more than if he had been carrying a doll instead of ten
stone.

At last we gained the end of the island, where there was a break in the
verdure, and from which we had a brief view of the sea before it was
blotted out by the black wall of the coming hurricane.

"We're done as far as getting on board is concerned," he said, as I
slid down his back on to the sand; "but, thank God, the boat is safe. In
another ten minutes she would have been too late to have reached either
the cutter or brigantine, and have been smothered. Look, Captain Guest
is all ready, and so is the cutter!"

I got up on my feet, just in time to see the boat go alongside the
brigantine, which was under a close reefed lower topsail and a bit of
her mainsail only--for Guest knew what was coming, and had prepared to
meet it; the cutter, too, was reefed down, and had taken her dingy on
deck. At that moment, however, both vessels were becalmed; but scarcely
had the whale boat been hoisted up to the starboard davits of the _Fray
Bentos_ and secured, when the hurricane struck both vessels. I thought
at first that our poor old brigantine was going to turn turtle, for she
was all but thrown on her beam ends; but righting herself gallantly, she
plunged away into the growing darkness, followed by the cutter, and in
five minutes both were hidden from view, and Yorke and myself had to
throw ourselves flat on our faces to avoid being blown down the beach
into the lagoon.

I had once, years before when a boy in Fiji, seen a bad hurricane, and
was rather proud of my experience, but I never saw, and never wish to
see again, such a truly terrifying and appalling sight as my companion
and I now witnessed--for within an hour all Nature seemed to have gone
stark, raving mad, a