by her side,
too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people.
And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above
the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of
natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some
litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.

"What are they doing outside?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a
peculiarly long wail of misery.

And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to
propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should
fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the
island to destroy them."

Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this
storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was
also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the
land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous
one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the
harbor of Samoa.

And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the
bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you
will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king,
save us!"

CHAPTER X.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.

"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a
whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into
her own quarters."

And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress's head,
and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.

But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent.
"The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night,"
they muttered, angrily. "She will not listen to us. Before morning, be
sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to destroy us."

About two o'clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been rising
steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut door.
The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical
moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were
still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the taboo
line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to the
lilt of their