wouldn’t trust her.”
“Who’s croaking now?” Grief reproved.
“I’d hate to lose that new engine before it paid for itself,” Captain Warfield
replied gloomily.
Parlay skipped with astonishing nimbleness across the crowded room to
the barometer on the wall.
“Take a look, my brave sailormen!” he cried exultantly.
The man nearest read the glass. The sobering effect showed plainly on his
face.
“It’s dropped ten,” was all he said, yet every face went anxious, and there
was a look as if every man desired immediately to start for the door.
“Listen!” Parlay commanded.
A SON OF THE SUN
136
In the silence the outer surf seemed to have become unusually loud. There
was a great rumbling roar.
“A big sea is beginning to set,” some one said; and there was a movement
to the windows, where all gathered.
Through the sparse cocoanuts they gazed seaward. An orderly succession
of huge smooth seas was rolling down upon the coral shore. For some
minutes they gazed on the strange sight and talked in low voices, and in
those few minutes it was manifest to all that the waves were increasing in
size. It was uncanny, this rising sea in a dead calm, and their voices
unconsciously sank lower. Old Parlay shocked them with his abrupt
cackle.
“There is yet time to get away to sea, brave gentlemen. You can tow
across the lagoon with your whaleboats.”
“It’s all right, old man,” said Darling, the mate of the Cactus, a stalwart
youngster of twenty-five. “The blow’s to the south’ard and passing on.
We’ll not get a whiff of it.”
An air of relief went through the room. Conversations were started, and
the voices became louder. Several of the buyers even went back to the
table to continue the examination of the pearls.
Parlay’s shrill cackle rose higher.
“That’s right,” he encouraged. “If the world was coming to an end you’d go
on buying.”
“We’ll buy these to-morrow just the same,” Isaacs assured him.
“Then you’ll be doing your buying in hell.”
The chorus of incredulous laughter incensed the old man. He turned
fiercely on Darling.
“Since when have children like you come to the knowledge of storms?
And who is the man who has plotted the hurricane-courses of the
Paumotus? What books will you find it in? I sailed the Paumotus before
the oldest of you drew breath. I know. To the eastward the paths of the
hurricanes are on so wide a circle they make a straight line. To the
westward here they make a sharp curve. Remember your chart. How did it
happen the hurricane of ’91 swept Auri and Hiolau? The curve, my brave
boy, the curve! In an hour, or two or three at most, will come the wind.
Listen to that!”
A SON OF THE SUN
137
A vast rumbling crash shook the coral foundations of the atoll. The house
quivered to it. The native servants, with bottles of whiskey and absinthe in
their hands, shrank together as if for protection and stared with fear
through the windows at the mighty wash of the wave lapping far up the
beach to the corner of a copra-shed.
Parlay looked at the barometer, giggled, and leered around at his guests.
Captain Warfield strode across to see.
“29:75,” he read. “She’s gone down five more. By God! the old devil’s
right. She’s a-coming, and it’s me, for one, for aboard.”
“It’s growing dark,” Isaacs half whispered.
“Jove! it’s like a stage,” Mulhall said to Grief, looking at his watch. “Ten
o’clock in the morning, and it’s like twilight. Down go the lights for the
tragedy. Where’s the slow music!”
In answer, another rumbling crash shook the atoll and the house. Almost
in a panic the company started for the door. In the dim light their sweaty
faces appeared ghastly. Isaacs panted asthmatically in the suffocating heat.
“What’s your haste?” Parlay chuckled and girded at his departing guests.
“A last drink, brave gentlemen.” No one noticed him. As they took the
shell-bordered path to the beach he stuck his head out the door and called,
“Don’t forget, gentlemen, at ten to-morrow old Parlay sells his pearls.”
III
On
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A SON OF THE SUN
138
rious scene took place. Whaleboat after whaleboat was being hurriedly
manned and shoved off. It had grown still darker. The stagnant calm
continued, and the sand shook under their feet with each buffet of the sea
on the outer shore. Narii Herring walked leisurely along the sand. He
grinned at the very evident haste of the captains and buyers. With him
were three of his Kanakas, and also Tai-Hotauri.
“Get into the boat and take an oar,” Captain Warfield ordered the latter.
Tai-Hotauri came over jauntily, while Narii Herring and his three Kanakas
paused and looked on from forty feet away.
“I work no more for you, skipper,” Tai-Hotauri said insolently and loudly.
But his face belied his words, for he was guilty of a prodigious wink. “Fire
me, skipper,” he huskily whispered, with a second significant wink.
Captain Warfield took the cue and proceeded to do some acting himself.
He raised his fist and his voice.
“Get into that boat,” he thundered, “or I’ll knock seven bells out of you!”
The Kanaka drew back truculently, and Grief stepped between to placate
his captain.
“I go to work on the Nuhiva,” Tai-Hotauri said, rejoining the other group.
“Come back here!” the captain threatened.
“He’s a free man, skipper,” Narii Herring spoke up. “He’s sailed with me in
the past, and he’s sailing again, that’s all.”
“Come on, we must get on board,” Grief urged. “Look how dark it’s
getting.”
Captain Warfield gave in, but as the boat shoved off he stood up in the
sternsheets and shook his fist ashore.
“I’ll settle with you yet, Narii,” he cried. “You’re the only skipper in the
group that steals other men’s sailors.” He sat down, and in lowered voice
queried: “Now what’s Tai-Hotauri up to? He’s on to something, but what is
it?”
IV
As the boat came alongside the Malahini, Hermann’s anxious face greeted
them over the rail.
A SON OF THE SUN
139
“Bottom out fall from barometer,” he announced. “She’s goin’ to blow. I
got starboard anchor overhaul.”
“Overhaul the big one, too,” Captain Warfield ordered, taking charge.
“And here, some of you, hoist in this boat. Lower her down to the deck
and lash her bottom up.”
Men were busy at work on the decks of all the schooners. There was a
great clanking of chains being overhauled, and now one craft, and now
another, hove in, veered, and dropped a second anchor. Like the Malahini,
those that had third anchors were preparing to drop them when the wind
showed what quarter it was to blow from.
The roar of the big surf continually grew, though the lagoon lay in the
mirror-like calm. There was no sign of life where Parlay’s big house
perched on the sand. Boat and copra-sheds and the sheds where the shell
was stored were deserted.
“For two cents I’d up anchors and get out,” Grief said. “I’d do it anyway if
it were open sea. But those chains of atolls to the north and east have us
pocketed. We’ve a better chance right here. What do you think, Captain
Warfield?”
“I agree with you, though a lagoon is no millpond for riding it out. I
wonder where she’s going to start from? Hello! There goes one of Parlay’s
copra-sheds.”
They could see the grass-thatched shed lift and collapse, while a froth of
foam cleared the crest of the sand and ran down to the lagoon.
“Breached across!” Mulhall exclaimed. “That’s something for a starter.
There she comes again!”
The wreck of the shed was now flung up and left on the sand-crest. A third
wave buffeted it into fragments which washed down the slope toward the
lagoon.
“If she blow I would as be cooler yet,” Hermann grunted. “No longer can I
breathe. It is damn hot. I am dry like a stove.”
He chopped open a drinking cocoanut with his heavy sheath-knife and
drained the contents. The rest of them followed his example, pausing once
to watch one of Parlay’s shell sheds go down in ruin. The barometer now
registered 29:50.
A SON OF THE SUN
140
“Must be pretty close to the centre of the area of low pressure,” Grief
remarked cheerfully. “I was never through the eye of a hurricane before. It
will be an experience for you, too, Mulhall. From the speed the
barometer’s dropped, it’s going to be a big one.”
Captain Warfield groaned, and all eyes drew to him. He was looking
through the glasses down the length of the lagoon to the southeast.
“There she comes,” he said quietly.
They did not need glasses to see. A flying film, strangely marked, seemed
drawing over the surface of the lagoon. Abreast of it, along the atoll,