ggled. Many of the trees
were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English
winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and
joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while,
elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some
noble dracaena or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay
tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and
plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the
mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed
every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to
herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.

What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew
as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even
the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the
fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid
conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the
waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the
eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a
regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the
familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the
shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved
their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had
allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in
the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.

But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away
to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches,
leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the
mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done
during the night to their obedient votaries.

Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore
to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his
shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet
shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go
outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch
you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do
to you."

"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night,