e
rather on edge, perhaps owing to the strain of the long-spun-out
suspense. At least she responded rather sharply to Kennedy's and my
greeting when we joined her on the poop.

I thought that perhaps Briscoe had been talking to her during his watch,
and doing his best to discredit my judgment, for no sooner had we joined
her than she turned upon me, and, in very incisive tones, informed me
that she had come to the conclusion that I had been mistaken, and that
there was going to be no hurricane after all, otherwise it would have
come before then. But I knew that the Indian Ocean hurricane sometimes
takes a long time brewing; indeed, in the case of my previous experience
it had threatened for more than ten hours before it actually burst upon
us. I explained this to her; and also said that there was nothing in
the aspect of the weather to make me alter my original opinion. We were
still engaged in debating the matter when a peculiar low, moaning sound
became audible in the air, rapidly increasing to a weird, unearthly
howl, and a wild, scuffling gust of hot wind swept over us from the
north and went whining away astern of us until we lost sound of it
altogether.

"It is coming at last, madam," I said; "we shall probably have three or
four more such gusts as that, each lasting longer than the one preceding
it, and--"

"And, begorra, here comes number two, now!" exclaimed Kennedy, as a
similar sound once more became audible; and with a vicious swoop another
gust smote us so fiercely that the yacht stopped dead, unable to make
headway against it. For a full minute or more it seemed as though half
a dozen separate and distinct winds were battling together for the
mastery, the yacht being the centre and focus round which the battle
raged. We on the poop were buffeted helplessly this way and that, so
that it was only with the utmost difficulty we could keep our feet;
indeed, Mrs Vansittart was literally lifted off her feet for a moment
and blown across the deck with such violence that, had she not luckily
been forced straight into my arms, so that I was able to catch and hold
her, she would probably have been seriously injured by being dashed
furiously against the poop rail.

She thanked me breathlessly as I dragged her by main force to the
mizenmast and passed a couple of turns of the topgallant halyard round
her waist, securing her to a belaying pin; and by the time that this was
done the gust, like the first, had p