THE HURRICANE
For many days Stuart lay in an alternation of fever and stupor,
tormented by dreams in which visions of the red land-crabs played a
terrible part, but youth and clean living were on his side, and he
passed the crisis. Thereafter, in the equable climate of Barbados--one
of the most healthful of the West Indies Islands--his strength began to
return.
The "Ol' Doc," as he was universally known in the neighborhood, was an
eccentric scientist who had spent his life in studying the plants of the
West Indies. He had lived in the Antilles for over forty years and knew
as much about the people as he did about the plant life.
Kindly-natured, the old botanist became greatly interested in his young
patient, and, that he should not weary in enforced idleness, sent to
Bridgetown for Stuart's trunk and his portable typewriter. Day by day
the boy practised, and then turned his hand to writing a story of his
experiences with the "debbil-trees" which story, by the way, he had to
rewrite three times before his host would let him send it.
"Writing," he would say, "is like everything else in the world. You can
do it quickly and well, after years of experience, but, at the
beginning, you must never let a sentence pass until you are sure that
you cannot phrase it better."
Moreover, as it turned out, the Ol' Doc was to be Stuart's guide in more
senses than one, for when the boy casually mentioned Guy Cecil's name,
the botanist twisted his head sidewise sharply.
"Eh, what? Who's that?" he asked. "What does he look like?"
Stuart gave a description, as exact as he could.
"Do you suppose he knows anything about flowers?"
"He seemed to know a lot about Jamaica orchids," the boy replied.
The botanist tapped the arm of his chair with definite, meditative taps.
"That man," he said, "has always been a mystery to me. How old would you
take him to be?"
"Oh, forty or so," the boy answered.
"He has looked that age for twenty years, to my knowledge. If I didn't
know better, I should believe him to have found the Fountain of
Perpetual Youth which Ponce de Leon and so many other of the early
Spanish adventurers sailed to the Spanish Main to find."
"But what is he?" asked Stuart, sitting forward and eager in attention.
"Who knows? He is the friend, the personal friend, of nearly every
important man in the Caribbean, whether that official be British, French
or Dutch; he is also regarded as a witch-master by half the black
population. I have met him in the jungles, botanizing--and he is a good
botanist--I have seen him suddenly appear as the owner of a sugar
plantation, as a seeker for mining concessions, as a merchant, and as a
hotel proprietor. I have seen him the owner of a luxurious yacht; I have
met him, half-ragged, looking for a job, with every appearance of
poverty and misery."
"But," cried the lad in surprise, "what can that all imply? Do you
suppose he's just some sort of a conspirator, or swindler, sometimes
rich and sometimes poor, according to the hauls he has made?"
"Well," said the botanist, "sometimes I have thought he is the sort of
man who would have been a privateer in the old days, a 'gentleman
buccaneer.' Maybe he is still, but in a different way. Sometimes, I have
thought that he was attached to the Secret Service of some government."
"English?"
"Probably not," the scientist answered, "because he is too English for
that. No, he is so English that I thought he must be for some other
government and was just playing the English part to throw off
suspicion."
"German?"
"It's not unlikely."
Whereupon Stuart remembered the guarded way in which the Managing Editor
had spoken of "European Powers," and this thought of Cecil threw him
back upon his quest.
"I'll soon have to be going on to Trinidad," he suggested a day or two
later. "I think I'm strong enough to travel, now."
"Yes," the old botanist answered, "you're strong enough to travel, but
you'd better not go just now."
"Why not?"
"Well----" the old West Indian resident cast a look at the sky, "there
are a good many reasons. Unless I'm much mistaken, there's wind about,
big wind, hurricane wind, maybe. I've been feeling uneasy, ever since
noon yesterday. Do you see those three mares'-tail high-cirrus clouds?"
"You mean those that look like feathers, with the quills so much thicker
than usual?"
"Yes, those. And you notice that those quills, as you call them, are not
parallel, but all point in the same direction, like the sticks of a fan?
That means a big atmospheric disturbance in that direction, and it
means, too, that it must be a gyrating one. That type of cirrus clouds
isn't proof of a coming hurricane, not by a good deal, but it's one of
the signs. And, if it comes, the center of it is now just about where
those mares'-tails are pointing."
"You're really afraid of a hurricane!" exclaimed Stuart, a little
alarmed at the seriousness of the old man's manner.
"There are few things in the world of which one ought more to be
afraid!" declared the old scientist dryly. "A hurricane is worse, far
worse, than an earthquake, sometimes."
Stuart sat silent for a moment, then,
"Are there any more signs?" he asked.
"Yes," was the quiet answer. "Nearly all the hurricane signs are
beginning to show. Look at the sea! If you'll notice, the surface is
fairly glassy, showing that there is not much surface wind. Yet, in
spite of that, there is a heavy, choppy, yet rolling swell coming up on
the beach."
"I had noticed the roar," Stuart agreed, "one can hear it plainly from
here."
"Exactly. But, if you watch for a few minutes, you'll see that the
swells are not long and unbroken, as after a steady period of strong
wind from any quarter, but irregular, some of the swells long, some
short. That suggests that they have received their initial impulse from
a hurricane, with a whirling center, the waves being whipped by gusts
that change their direction constantly.
"Notice, too, how hollow our voices sound, as if there were a queer
resonance in the air, rather as if we were talking inside a drum.
"You were complaining of the heat this morning, and, now, there is
hardly any wind. What does that mean?
"It means that the trade wind, which keeps this island cool even in the
hottest summer, has been dying down, since yesterday. Now, since the
trade winds blow constantly, and are a part of the unchanging movements
of the atmosphere, you can see for yourself that any disturbance of the
atmosphere which is violent enough to overcome the constant current of
the trade winds must be of vast size and of tremendous force.
"What can such a disturbance be? The only answer is--a hurricane.
"Then there's another reason for feeling heat. That would be if the air
were unusually hazy and moist. Now, if you'll observe, during this
morning and the early part of the afternoon, the air has been clear,
then hazy, then clear again, and is once more hazy. That shows a rapid
and violent change in the upper air.
"So far, so good. Now, in addition to observations of the clouds, the
sea and the air at the surface, it helps--more, it is all-important--to
check these observations by some scientific instrument which cannot lie.
For this, we must use the barometer, which, as you probably know, is
merely an instrument for weighing the air. When the air is heavier the
barometer rises, when the air grows lighter, the barometer falls.
"Yesterday, the barometer rose very high, much higher than it would in
ordinary weather. This morning, it was jumpy, showing--as the changes in
the haziness of the air showed--irregular and violent movements in the
upper atmosphere. It is now beginning to go down steadily, a little
faster every hour. This is an almost sure sign that there is a hurricane
in action somewhere, and, probably, within a few hundred miles of here.
"But tell me, Stuart, since we have been talking, have you noticed any
change in the atmosphere, or in the sky."
"Well," answered the boy, hesitating, for he did not wish to seem
alarmist, "it did seem to me as if there were a sort of reddish color in
the sky, as if the blue were turning rusty."
"Watch it!" said the botanist, with a note of awe in his voice, "and you
will see what you never have seen before!"
For a few moments he kept silence.
The rusty color gradually rose in intensity to a ruby hue and then to an
angry crimson, deepening as the sun sank.
Over the sky, covered with a milky veil, which reflected this glowing
color, there began to rise, in the south-west, an arch of shredded
cirrus cloud, its denser surface having greater reflecting powers,
seeming to give it a sharp outline against the veiled sky.
The scientist rose, consulted the barometer, and returned, looking very
grave.
"It looks bad," he said. "There is not much doubt that it will strike
the island."
"Take to the hurricane wing, then!" suggested Stuart, a little
jestingly. In common with many Barbados houses, the botanist's dwelling
was provided with a hurricane wing, a structure of heavy masonry, with
only one or two narrow slits to let in air, and with a roof like a gun
casemate.
There was no jest in the Old Doctor's tone, as he answered,
"I have already ordered that provisions be sent there, and that the
servants be prepared to go."
This statement brought Stuart up with a jerk. In common with many
people, it seemed impossible to him that he would pass through one of
the great convulsions of nature. Human optimism always expects to escape
a danger.
"But this is the beginning of October!" the boy protested. "I always
thought hurricanes came in the summer months."
"No; August, September and October are the three worst months. That is
natural, for a hurricane could not happen in the winter and even the
early summer ones are not especially dangerous. But the signs of this
one are troubling. Look!"
He pointed to the sea.
The rolling swell was losing its character. The water, usually either a
turquoise-blue or a jade-green, was now an opaque olive-black. The waves
were choppy, and threw up small heads of foam like the swirl of
cross-currents in a tide-rip.
Stuart began to feel a little frightened.
"Do you really think it will come here?"
"Yes," said the botanist gravely, "I do. In fact I am sure of it.
Barbados is full in the hurricane track, you know."
"But why?" queried the boy. "I've always heard of West Indian
hurricanes. Do they only happen here? I don't see why they should come
here more than any other place."
"Do you know why they come at all?"
Stuart thought for a moment.
"No," he answered, "I don't know that I do. I never thought anything
about it. I always figured that storms just happened, somehow."
"Nothing 'just happens,'" was the stern rebuke. "Hark!"
He held up his finger for silence.
A low rumbling, sounding something like the pounding of heavy surf on a
beach heard at a distance, and closely akin to the sound made by Niagara
Falls, seemed to fill the air. And, across the sound, came cracks like
distant pistol shots heard on a clear day.
The white arch rose slowly and just underneath it appeared an arch of
darker cloud, almost black.
At the same moment, came a puff of the cool wind from the north.
"We will have it in less than two hours," said the scientist. "It is a
good thing that all afternoon I have had the men and women on the place
nailing the shutters tight and fastening everything that can be
fastened. We may only get the edge of the hurricane, we may get the
center. There is no telling. An island is not like a ship, which can
direct its course so as to escape the terrible vortex of the center.
We've got to stay and take it."
"But has every hurricane a center?" queried the boy, a little relieved
by the thought that the storm would not come for two hours. In that
time, he foolishly thought, it might have spent its force. He did not
know that hurricanes possess a life of their own which endures not less
than a week, and in one or two cases, as long as a month.
"You wouldn't ask whether every hurricane has a center," the scientist
replied, "if you knew a little more about them. As there is nothing for
us to do but wait, and as it is foolish to go to the hurricane wing
until the time of danger, I might as well explain to you what a
hurricane really is. Then, if you live through it----" Stuart jumped at
the sudden idea of the imminent danger--"you'll be able to write to your
paper about it, intelligently."
"I'd really like to know," declared Stuart, leaning forward eagerly.
"Well," said his informant, "I'll make it as simple as I can, though, I
warn you, a hurricane isn't a subject that can be explained in a
sentence or two.
"You know that summer and winter weather are different. You ought to be
able to see that summer and winter winds are different. The difference
in seasons is caused by the respective positions of the northern and
southern hemispheres to the sun. The greater the heat, the greater the
atmospheric changes. Hurricanes are great whirls caused by violent
changes of the air. Therefore hurricanes come only in the summer."
"That's clear and easy!" declared the boy, delighted that he was able to
follow the explanation.
"Now, as to why hurricanes strike here and nowhere else. I'll try and
explain that, too. There is a belt of ocean, just north of and on the
equator, known as the 'doldrums,' where it is nearly always calm, and
very hot. There is also a belt of air running from Southern Europe to
the West Indies where the north-east trade winds blow all the year
round. Between this perpetual calm of the doldrums and the perpetual
wind of the trades is a region of atmospheric instability.
"Now, consider conditions to the west of us. The Caribbean Sea and the
Gulf of Mexico, together, form what is almost a great inland sea with
the West Indian Islands as its eastern shore. The trade winds do not
reach it. The Pacific winds do not reach it, for they are diverted by
the high ranges of Central America. The winds from North America do not
reach it, because these always turn northwards on reaching the
Mississippi Valley and leave the United States by the St. Lawrence
Valley.
"So, Stuart, you can see that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico
have over them, in summer, a region of air, little disturbed by wind,
not far from the Equator and which, therefore, becomes steadily heated
and steadily saturated by the evaporation from the body of water
below."
"Yes," agreed the boy, "I can see that."
"Very good. Now, such a steady heating of one section of air is bound to
disturb the balance of the atmosphere. This disturbance, moreover, must
be acted upon by the rotation of the earth. Just as all the weather in
the United States comes from the west and travels eastwards, so the
track of hurricane origins travels eastwards during the course of a
summer.
"For this reason, West Indian hurricanes in June generally have their
origin west of Jamaica, July hurricanes east of Jamaica, August
hurricanes in the eastern Caribbean, September hurricanes in the
Atlantic east and south of the West Indies, and October hurricanes far
out to sea, perhaps even as far as half-way to the Cape Verde Islands on
the shores of Africa. This hurricane which is approaching, is from the
direction of East-South-East, judging from the barometer and other
conditions, and probably had its cradle a thousand or more miles away."
"And it hasn't blown itself out?"
"Far from it. It is only gathering strength and violence. Not until it
twists off on its track will it begin to diminish. For hurricanes follow
a regular track, an invisible trail marked out for them in the sky."
"They do!"
"Yes, all of them. This track is shaped like a rounded cone, or, more
often, like a boomerang, with a short arm running north-westwards to
its place of turning and a long arm running northeastwards until its
force is spent. The point of turning is always in the West Indies zone.
As the storm is at its worst at the point of turning, it is always in
the West Indies that the hurricane is most destructive.
"No matter where they start, West Indian hurricanes always sweep
north-westward until they have crossed the line of the West Indies and
then wheel around sharply to the north-east, skirting the United States
coast. Some strike Florida. A good many run along the coast and hit
Hatteras. Some never actually touch the continent at all, and only a few
ever strike inland. But some part of the West Indies is hit by every one
of them."
"Are they so frequent?"
"There's never a year without one or more. There have been years with
five or six. Of course, some hurricanes are much more violent than
others. Their destructive character depends a good deal, too, on the
place where their center passes. Thus if, at the moment of its greatest
fury, the full ferocity of the whirl is expended on the ocean, not much
harm is done. But if it should chance to descend upon a busy and
thriving city, the loss of life will be appalling.
"Of these disastrous hurricanes, it would be fair to state that at least
once in every four years, some part of the West Indies is going to
suffer a disaster, and once in every twenty years there is a hurricane
of such violence as to be reckoned a world calamity."
The botanist rose, took another look at the barometer, and called one of
the older servants.
"Send every one into the hurricane wing," he said. "See that the storm
lantern is there, filled and lighted. Tell the cook to pour a pail of
water on the kitchen fire before she leaves. See, yourself, that every
place is securely fastened. The rain will be here in ten minutes."
The negro, who was gray with fright, flashed a quick look of relief at
the orders to seek the hurricane wing, and ran off at full speed.
"The first rain-squalls will not be bad," continued the "Old Doc," "and
I like to stay out as long as I can, to watch its coming. It will be
nearly dark when this one strikes us, though, and there won't be much to
see."
"But what starts them, sir?" queried the boy, who had become intensely
interested, since the grim phantasmagoria was unfolding itself on sea
and sky before his eyes.
"As I have told you, it is the creation of a super-heated and saturated
mass of air, only possible in a calm region, such as the Caribbean west
of the West Indies, or the doldrum region southeast of them. Let me show
you how it happens.
"A region of air, over a tropical sea, little moved by wind-currents,
becomes warmer than the surrounding region of air; the air over this
region becomes lighter; the lighter air rises and flows over the colder
layers of surrounding air, increasing the pressure on that ring and
increasing the inward flow to the warm central area where the air
pressure has been diminished by the overflow aloft. The overflowing air
reaches a point on the outside of the cold air area, when it again
descends, and once more flows inward to the center, making a complete
circuit. Do you understand so far?"
Stuart knitted his brows in perplexity.
"I--I think so, but I'm not sure," he said. "Then the barometer rose,
yesterday, because we were in the cold air area, which became heavier
because there was a layer of warm air on the top of it. The storm has
moved westward. The cold air section has passed. The barometer is
falling now because we're in the region of warm air, which is steadily
rising and is therefore lighter. That shows we're nearer to the center.
Is that it?"
The scientist tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair in pleased
appreciation.
"Very good," he said, "you are exactly right. And, from now on, the
barometer will drop suddenly, for the whirl of the wind will make a
partial vacuum in the very center of the hurricane."
"But I don't see what makes it whirl," protested the boy. "If it goes up
in the middle, flows over at the top and comes down at the outside and
then flows into the middle again, why could it not keep on doing that
all the time, until the balance was put straight again?"
"It would," the scientist agreed, "but for one thing you have
forgotten."
"And what's that?"
"The rotation of the earth."
A single drop of rain fell, then another, making a splash as large as a
twenty-five cent piece.
"Now see it come!" said the scientist.
As though his words had summoned it, a liquid opacity, like a piece of
clouded glass, thrust itself between their eyes and the landscape. So
suddenly it came that Stuart actually did not realize that this was
falling rain, until, looking at the ground, he saw the earth dissolve
into mud before his eyes and saw the garden turn into what seemed like
the bed of a shallow river. The wind whistled with a vicious note. The
squall lasted scarcely a minute, and was gone.
"That's the first," remarked the boy's informant. "We'd better get under
shelter, they'll come fast and furious soon."
Passing through a low passage connecting the house with the hurricane
wing, Stuart noticed that, beside the massiveness of the structure, it
was braced from within.
"In case the house should fall on it," the scientist observed, noting
Stuart's glances. "I've no wish to be buried alive. In any case, I keep
crowbars in the wing, so that, in case of any unforeseen disaster, a
breach could be made in the walls and we could get out that way."
They entered the hurricane wing. It was not as dark as Stuart had
expected. The scientist, anxious to observe the storms when they should
come, had built into the wall two double dead-eye windows, such as are
used in the lower decks of liners and which can resist the impact of the
heaviest waves.
The crimson light had gone. The vivid sunset reflections, now thrown
back from the black arch, yet gave a reddish smokiness to the livid and
sickly green which showed, from time to time, beneath the underhanging
masses of inky black. The sky to the north and to the south had a
tortured appearance, as though some demon of a size beyond imagining
were twisting the furies of the tempest in his clutch.
"You asked," said the scientist, speaking in the hurricane wing, as
quietly as he had on the verandah, and paying absolutely no heed to the
moaning and praying of the negroes huddled in the darkest corner, "what
makes a hurricane whirl. Yet, in the heavens, you can see the skies
a-twist!"
A second rain-squall struck. Thick as were the walls, they could not
keep out the wailing shriek of the wind, nor the hissing of the rain,
which flashed like a continuous cutting blade of steel past the windows.
The hurricane wing could not rock, it was too low and solidly planted
for that, but it trembled in the impact.
After a couple of minutes came a lull, and Stuart's ears were filled
with the cries and howling of the frightened negroes, not a sound of
which had been audible during the squall. The scientist continued his
talk in an even voice, as peacefully as though he were in his study.
"You asked what could set the skies a-twist. I told you, the earth's
rotation. For, Stuart, you must remember that a hurricane is not a small
thing. This heated region of the air of which we have been speaking,
with its outer belt of cooler air, and the descending warm air beyond,
is a region certainly not less than five hundred miles in diameter and
may be a great deal more.
"Now, the air, as you know, is held to the earth's surface by
gravitation, but, being gaseous, it is not held as closely as if it were
in a solid state. Also, there is centrifugal force to be considered.
Also the fact that the earth is not round, but flattened at the poles.
Also the important fact that air at the equator is more heated than at
the Polar regions. All these things together keep the air in a constant
commotion. The combined effect of these, in the northern hemisphere, is
that air moving along the surface of the earth is deflected to the
right. Thus in the case we are considering, the lower currents,
approaching the heated center, do not come in equally from all
directions, but are compelled to approach in spirals. This spiral action
once begun increases, of itself, in power and velocity. This is a
hurricane in its baby stage."
Another squall struck.
Speech again became impossible. As before, sheets of water--which bore
no relation to rain, but seemed rather as though the earth were at the
foot of a waterfall from which a river was leaping from on high--were
hurled over the land. The shrieking of the wind had a wild and maniacal
sound, the sound which Jamaicans have christened "the hell-cackle of a
hurricane." This squall lasted longer, five minutes or more, and when it
passed, the wind dropped somewhat, but did not die down. It raged
furiously, its shriek dropped to a sullen and menacing roar.
"Such a hurricane as this," the "Ol' Doc" continued, "has taken many
days to brew. Day after day the air has remained in its ominous quietude
over the surface of the ocean, becoming warmer and warmer, gathering
strength for its devastating career. The water vapor has risen higher
and higher. Dense cumulus clouds have formed, the upper surfaces of
which have caught all the sun's heat, intensifying the unstable
equilibrium of the air. The powers of the tempest have grown steadily in
all evil majesty of destructiveness. Day by day, then hour by hour, then
minute by minute, the awful force has been generated, as steam is
generated by fierce furnace fires under a ship's boilers.
"Why, Stuart, it has been figured that the air in a hurricane a hundred
miles in diameter and a mile high, weighs as much as half-a-million
Atlantic liners, and this incredibly huge mass is driven at twice the
speed of the fastest ship afloat. In these gusts, which come with the
rain squalls, the wind will rise to a velocity of a hundred and twenty
miles an hour. It strikes!"
A crack of thunder deafened all, and green and violet lightning winked
and flickered continuously. The hiss of the rain, the shrieking of the
wind and the snapping crackle of the thunder defied speech. The heat in
the hurricane wing was terrific, but Stuart shivered with cold. It was
the cold of terror, the cold of helplessness, the cold of being
powerless in such an awful evidence of the occasional malignity of
Nature.
Between the approach of night and the closing in of the clouds, an inky
darkness prevailed, though in the intervals between the outbursts of
lightning, the sky had a mottled copper and green coloration, the copper
being the edges of low raincloud-masses, and the green, the flying scud
above.
Squall followed squall in ever-closer succession, the uproar changing
constantly from the shriek of the hundred-mile wind in the squall to the
dull roar of the fifty-mile wind in between. The thunder crackled,
without any after-rumble, and the trembling of the ground could be felt
from the pounding of the terrific waves half a mile away. Then, in a
long-drawn-out descending wail, like the howl of a calling coyote, the
hurricane died down to absolute stillness.
"Whew!" exclaimed Stuart, in relief. "I'm glad that's over."
"Over!" the scientist exclaimed. "The worst is to come! We're in the eye
of the hurricane. Look!"
Overhead the sky was almost clear, so clear that the stars could be
seen, but the whirl of air, high overhead, made them twinkle so that
they seemed to be dancing in their places. To seaward, a violet glow,
throbbing and pulsating, showed where the lightning was playing.
"I'm going out to see if all's safe," said the scientist. "Do you want
to come?"
Stuart would have rather not. But he dared not refuse. They had hardly
left the hurricane wing and got to the outside, when "Ol' Doc" sniffed.
"No," he said, "we'll go back. We're not full in the center. The edge
will catch us again."
He pointed.
Not slowly this time, but with a swiftness that made it seem unreal, a
shape like a large hand rose out of the night and blotted out the stars.
A distant clamor could be heard, at first faintly, and then with a
growing speed, like the oncoming of an express train.
"In with you, in!" cried the scientist.
They rushed through the low passage and bolted the heavy door.
Then with a crash which seemed enough to tear a world from its moorings,
the opposite side of the hurricane struck, all the worse in that it came
without even a preparatory breeze. The noise, the tumult, the sense of
the elements unchained in all their fury was so terrible that the boy
lost all sense of the passage of time. The negroes no longer moaned or
prayed. A stupor of paralysis seized them.
So passed the night.
Towards morning, the painful rarefaction of the air diminished. The
squalls of rain and all-devouring gusts of wind abated, and became less
and less frequent.
The sky turned gray. Upon the far horizon rose again the cirrus arc, but
with the dark above and the light below. Majestically it rose and
spanned the sky, and, under its rim of destruction, came the sunrise in
its most peaceful colors of rose and pearl-gray, sunrise upon a ravaged
island.
Over three hundred persons had been killed that night, and many millions
of dollars of damage done. Yet everyone in Barbados breathed relief.
The hurricane had passed.