The Hurricane by Charles Brown, Jr

by OMNICAdmin

  times. Each time she was compelled to stop

  Adventure

  10

  and rewrap the cord.

  and the “touch of death” had done.

  Then the white blaze of noon came.

  Suddenly the island’ calm was

  The heat was horrible. It scorched her back broken. Two long white objects shot into

  and shoulders. Her arm pained so badly

  the lagoon and half-way across to the jetty.

  that she had to change the pad on the

  When they came to a stop, small boats

  wound. It was a long while before she

  began to skim shoreward.

  finally shot out into the sea and drove the A few minutes later the beach, was

  canoe toward Suva.

  aswarm with people. Some of the men

  The sun was slipping behind the

  lugged big bundles of burying mats while

  dark hill ranges when Kalputa climbed up

  others carried boxes and clothing. They

  on the damp green wharf at Suva and sped

  followed a woman who ran swiftly ahead

  toward the tiny mission house standing in a of them.

  clump of lemon bushes. On the cool palm-

  “Capt’in Barker! Me here!” cried

  shaded verandas on either side of the long

  Kalputa, rushing into the grove of paw-paw

  street Government officials and their trees. “Me here!”

  families sat in loose white duck at little

  At the sound of her old watchword,

  tables, eating their evening meal and “Me here! ”—the watchword she had used laughing in low voices.

  in the trading station during the period they Kalputa ran swiftly, her breath were so happy—Captain Barker opened his coming in short broken gasps. She reached

  eyes and stared vaguely at her.

  the mission house just as the vesper prayers She leaned over him in the yellow

  were being said.

  moonlight and slipped her thin arm beneath

  his head, raising it until it rested on her NIGHT had come again to Flenga Island.

  breast.

  Except for the humming water on the coral

  The missionaries and the

  reefs and the homeless wind beating in

  Government officials entered the grove.

  from the lonely sea, a dead calm was on all

  “Capt’in Barker!” Kalputa’s arm

  the island lying low and black like a whale tightened about his huge back as a look of

  asleep with its back out of the water. The

  understanding came into his eyes. “Capt’in

  yellow moon came up. It looked like a

  Barker, Kalputa bling two boat un’ fienty

  lamp in the hand of the hurricane god who

  help from Suva.”

  was coming back to see all the damage he