“Not a bit. Sound as a bell. You?”
“All right.”
“But where’s the water? There should be six feet here, and I can feel none.”
“Blown away to sea. We may thank God the wind is not on-shore, or we’d have been drowned, as hundreds of other poor wretches are this moment. Ah! That’s a shave.”
A lightning flash showed them a huge tree plucked from its roots, and blowing past them, squirming and crashing about like a live mad thing. Then a heavy squared roof-beam hit their jagged pile, and missed Onslow’s arm by a nail’s breadth.
“The hotel’s going down,” he shouted. “The air will be full of this stuff in a minute, and if we try to move we shall be brained before we’ve got a yard. Crouch down, dear, at the bottom of the post.”
“You too?”
“No, there isn’t room.”
“Then I shall stand.”
She dragged at his sleeve and pulled him to her side. “Stay by me here, Pat. You might get swept away, and I couldn’t bear that.”