Sun Li preferred the open sea to long calls at the various ports
outlined on their itinerary, so they spent very little of the time on
land, after all. They stopped at Charleston, down in South Carolina, and
all went ashore to walk along the beautiful Battery, and later through
the picturesque old city—creating not a little comment and excitement
with their decidedly exotic procession, and the fact of the big tea
clipper putting in at a port where clippers did not usually call. But
they did not stay, returning on board within a few hours, and setting
sail for Savannah that same afternoon.
The latter city, with its wide, tree-lined streets, and flower-filled
parks delighted them all; it was here Erica saw her first great trees
hung with the long, trailing gray moss. But His Excellency was restless
to be back on the _Sea Gull_, and as they had done at their first stop,
they sailed again the day of their arrival.
From Savannah, Captain Eric set a course for Cuba, and on the second day
out from the Georgia coast, abruptly and out of a smiling summer sky,
their first bad weather descended upon the voyagers.
Summer is the time in the West Indies for hurricanes, and at the sudden
dropping of the barometer, Captain Eric became instantly anxious. As far
as the rest of the party could see, though, there had been no visible
change in the weather. The skies were still brightly and vividly blue,
and the waves no higher than a long, lazy swell. Even the wind had not
freshened. Instead it had dropped to an almost dead calm.
Then, little by little, the sky began to cloud over—clouds seeming to
leap into sight quite suddenly, where only a short while before there
had been nothing but blue. The _Sea Gull_, in spite of her enormous
spread of canvas, designed for speed (for the tea clippers were racing
ships, each seeking to outdistance all rivals in her hurry to land a
cargo first in the market), could make little headway. But presently all
on board were conscious that she was rolling noticeably. The swells were
higher now, and seemed to increase in size endlessly; they were
oily-looking, without crests or foam, and came on in regular
undulations, lifting the ship with a queer, sinister effect of upheaval
that grew to have more and more of a threat of violence behind it.
And then, all in a minute, the wind arrived—a mighty, moving wall of
wind that had an impact like a solid substance when it struck the
clipper. Accompanying it there came darkness, and a great pandemonium of
sound: shriekings and moanings, and strange growling, hissing noises
like nothing Erica had ever heard before, or imagined.
The crew were in a frenzy of ordered activity on deck, lowering the huge
sails and making everything fast. Even Lis had duties, and Erica,
finding no one of whom she could ask questions, retired disconsolately
to her own little cabin, where she found Milly, pale as a little
black-garbed ghost, on her knees before her bunk.
“Oh, Ricky,” the girl cried, thankfully, on her entrance, “if someone
hadn’t come soon I guess I’d have _died_! Cousin Callie’s looking after
Cousin Charity in their cabin, and they have Barbee with them. There
wasn’t any room for me, so I—Do you think the ship can possibly stand up
against such a wind? It’s—it’s like one of those dreadful things you
dream in nightmares. Oooh! Listen to that awful shrieking! It
sounds—Ricky, I’m—_scared_.” She whispered the last in a shamed little
half-voice, but with obvious sincerity, and Erica, clinging to the
door-jamb to keep her feet in the heavy rolling, tried to smile
reassuringly.
“Trust father, Milly. He’s been in some pretty bad storms, and the _Sea
Gull_ and he have always come through safely,” she said, bravely.
“Probably it seems worse to us because it’s our first experience with a
hurricane.”
“Oh—is it _that_?” Poor Milly wailed, sliding across the small cabin
with the next lurch of the ship, and clutching desperately at Erica’s
outstretched hand just in time to save herself from a head-on collision
with Sun Li’s teakwood chest.
“I—guess so,” Erica said, briefly. “I heard Mr. Peterson, the mate, call
it that to Lis a moment ago.” She sat down on the floor, one arm about
Milly, bracing both of them with her knees against the door-jamb and her
back pressed against the low side of the bunk.
“Hold on to me,” she advised, “or we’ll both be black and blue
tomorrow.”
“If we’re not at the bottom of the sea, you mean,” Milly said, bitterly.
They remained on the floor, clinging to each other for what seemed to
both girls endless ages. The terrifying violence of the wind seemed to
be increasing, and the plunging of the ship grew worse as the hours
passed. They did not attempt to leave the cabin to go in search of any
of the rest of their party, since it was all they could do to keep
themselves from being knocked about, with the chance of serious injury,
where they were. For the same reason, probably, no one else came to
them.
There was no thought of the usual evening meal. No one had any appetite
for it, even if it could have been prepared and served. To the unnatural
darkness of the storm was gradually added the natural darkness of
approaching night. In the tiny, redecorated cabin, neither Erica nor
Milly could see their surroundings. Each knew that the other was there,
close—comfortingly close—by the feel of their arms holding and bracing
each other against the incessant rolling and pitching of the clipper.
And then, at the very height of the storm, there came a sudden lull, a
mystifying dying down of the wind that was somehow even more alarming
than its former violence. The _Sea Gull_ still pitched on the huge
waves, but it seemed as if the hurricane had blown itself out, with the
uncanny instantaneousness of magic.
Erica released her protecting hold on Milly, and sat up, breathing
unevenly, and stretching cramped arms and legs.
“Perhaps this is the storm center,” she offered, doubtfully. “I’ve heard
there’s always a spot of dead calm, right at the heart of a hurricane or
cyclone. It lasts only a little while, and then you come out into the
opposite side, where the wind’s even worse than before.”
“Oh—oh, Ricky!” Milly said, in consternation. “You mean—all—_that_ has
to start right up again? Let’s see if we can’t get to Cousin Callie,”
she suggested, eagerly, jumping to her feet, “before it begins.”
“All right,” Erica agreed, and was preparing to rise to her feet also,
when there was a loud, grating, scraping noise that seemed to come from
underneath the ship herself; a _slithering_, rumbling sound as if the
keel were being forced across an uneven, rocky surface.
The two girls had time for no more than an instinctive clutch at each
other, and two frightened gasps, before the grating underneath them was
followed by a rending crash that rocked the _Sea Gull_ more cruelly than
either wind or waves had yet done.
The suddenness of it flung them back helplessly on the cabin floor.
It couldn’t have been much over five minutes before they heard hurrying
steps in the corridor, and Lis, a lighted lantern in his hand, stood in
the doorway, silhouetted against the blackness behind him.
He lifted his lantern so its light should shine farther into the cabin,
and uttered an alarmed ejaculation at sight of the two girls huddled on
the floor against the bunk.
”_Rick!_” he cried out sharply, then, “Milly! Are you hurt?”
The clipper was not rolling at all now—a fact which seemed suddenly more
ominous than all that had gone before. The girls scrambled hurriedly to
their feet and caught at Lister’s arm, one on each side of him.
“What’s happened?” Erica cried. “Did we hit something?”
Lis nodded soberly. “Ran on a reef, they say. We don’t know what the
damage to the ship is yet, of course. Uncle Eric sent me down to get you
all on deck. It’s too dark to see anything, but he seems to think we’ve
hit on some outstanding coral reef of one of these islands.”
He had turned back along the corridor as he spoke, Erica and Milly
following closely at his heels. The same thought was in both girls’
minds—did the summons to come at once on deck mean taking to the
lifeboats? Was the _Sea Gull_ in as bad a case as _that_?
Up on deck there was no confusion. Mrs. Folger was already there,
standing by Captain Eric, with little Barbee hanging to her skirts. Miss
Charity had been carried up by two of the sailors, and sat on a coil of
rope, her face set and white in the light of a near-by lantern, but
quite calm. Sun Li’s gorgeous sedan chair with its coolie bearers behind
and before had been placed beside Miss Charity’s rope-seat, but the
Governor himself was standing at the captain’s side, leaning on the arm
of little Dr. Wu and observing placidly the scene about them.
Erica ran to her father and slipped her arm through his, grateful for
the comforting strength of the big, whipcord muscles under his blue
cloth sleeve.
“Are we—wrecked, father?” she asked in a small, not-too-steady voice,
pressing closer.
“No, no,” he returned, quickly and reassuringly. “We’ve run on a reef,
sure enough, but the old clipper’s not taking in any water—we’ve not
even strained her seams, praise the Lord! We’ll just have to wait for
morning to find out where we are and how we’re to get afloat again.”
The mate had come up on deck now, and drew near the captain to say
something in a lowered voice. Captain Eric listened gravely, and then
nodded.
“You can all go below and turn in with easy minds,” he addressed the
anxious little group about him. “A second, more thorough examination
shows no water coming in. We’ve escaped by a miracle, no less. We
certainly drove aground hard enough to have ripped her open, by the feel
of it.”
“But the wind—it’s beginning again,” Erica whispered, drawing his ear
down to her lips, for she did not want the others to hear. “Aren’t we in
the storm center of a hurricane, and won’t the wind be just as bad again
in a few minutes?”
“Probably, my wise little daughter,” Captain Eric said, with a tender
smile for her worried face. “But as well as we can make out in the
darkness, we have been blown into some sort of harbor—where, I’ve no
means of telling till daybreak. There are small, scattered islands all
about us, and we’ve doubtless been driven aground on one of them—in the
lee of some promontory, I should judge, or into a natural, protected
harbor. We are safe enough for tonight. The hand of the Lord has
piloted us, in our need, and it will become us all to give Him due
thanks before we sleep.”
The wind was once more howling and shrieking in all its former violence,
but evidently the _Sea Gull_ had, as her captain declared, found
sanctuary in some sheltered inlet or harbor, for the full force of the
storm seemed to pass high overhead as if deflected from her by an
intervening barrier. The waves washed over her decks from time to time,
but did not succeed in dislodging her from the rocky ledge she had run
on. She did not even rock or bump against the reef, but rested in her
new-found berth as securely as if built on a strong and safe foundation.
After a little, rather anxious lingering on deck, ready for any new
surprises that might come, the passengers of the _Sea Gull_ finally
accepted her captain’s verdict and retired below to their several
cabins, reassured as to the immediate future.
The younger members of the party slept soundly, because even in the face
of danger youth can sleep the clock around if left undisturbed. Erica’s
last waking memory of that night was the continued shrilling whistle of
the wind through her porthole, and the intermittent crash of waves along
the ship’s side. The next thing she knew was a flood of early morning
sunshine pouring in that same porthole and lying in a pool of bright
gold on the golden Chinese carpet. The world outside was as peaceful and
newly-washed and brilliant as if no noisy, murderous wind and battering
waves had waged a losing battle the night before for the _Sea Gull_ and
her human cargo.
Milly Thorne was still asleep, and Erica, without waking her, slipped
out of her bunk and padded across the soft, velvet pile of the carpet to
the porthole and peered eagerly out. The sea had gone down in the night,
and now lay spread out in gentle heaving bright-green swells from the
porthole through which Erica was looking to the still greener shore of a
low forest-clad hillside only a few hundred yards away.
Erica stared, fascinated by the suddenness of the land’s appearance, and
the dense, strange jungle growth of trees, underbrush, and creepers that
matted the hill almost to the water’s edge.
“Father was right,” Erica told herself, excitedly. “That must be an
island—a real tropical island.” She stared a moment longer, then whirled
on her bare heel, crossed the tiny cabin in two tomboy strides, and,
snatching at her clothes, began to dress with fumbling, hurrying
fingers.