There had been no working up to it. The summer lightning was noiseless, and there had not been so much as a mutter of thunder all the day. The great bellow of noise had come in an instant without a rustle of warning.
“That’s close overhead,” Onslow remarked, “and something else will follow. If it’s rain, we shall have a deluge falling in ropes, but I fancy we’re in for something different. We had better turn back, Elsie.”
“In view of this heat, a wetting would be a distinct luxury; but I think, as you say, there is something else coming besides. Oh, Pat, here it is. Run, or we shall be caught.”
The storm gave but one weird moan, a rustle and a shriek from over the treetops, and then was upon them. In a minute it was blowing with a hurricane force which no human being could stand against.
The wind plucked the feet from under them, and they fell to the decking of the pier, gripping with their fingers in the gaps between the planks. A storm of sand and leaves and twigs beat against their heads. The crazy tressle-work of the pier buckled and swung beneath their bodies.
“We must get shorewards,” Onslow yelled in his companion’s ear; “this jam-crack thing will go by the board directly.”
“Right, oh,” came back the response cheerily enough, and together they began to warp themselves towards the beach and the wind, plank at a time. The girl was strong, and accustomed to using her muscles; but skirts are a poor rig to play caterpillar in, and her progress was slow even with Onslow’s help. When they had gained a score of yards, she bade him leave her to make the best of his own way. “I shall get along all right,” she cried. “Go and tell them I’m coming.”
“Naturally I should,” he shouted back with a laugh. “Here, let me link my arm inside yours. That’s right. Now we’ll ferry along at twice the pace.”
But they did not get much further. A minute afterwards, to the kick of a harder squall, the gray old pier tottered and clattered and crunched, and the wind was filled with flying boards, and Onslow found himself with one arm clutching the weed-clad stump of a pile, and the other wrapped round Elsie Kildare.
“Hurt?” he shouted anxiously.