Wings of the Wind

by Credo Fitch Harris

"You are right, mon Capitaine, if they will mind you. But will they? A chance comes for to—what my boy Tommy calls plug—that old sinner, and so they will jump to a fight. Fight! Bah! How many fools give a life for one who cannot give a reason!"

"There's reason enough here," Tommy laughed. "But we'll promise to be careful, if that satisfies you."

When at last we dropped anchor half a mile outside the entrance of Little Cove our deck became active. I went off first with the supplies to choose a spot where they should be stored, although in such a black night this might have been left haphazard to the men. But one never believes, on occasions so momentous as pitching camp, that others know a jot about it but oneself—to this there are practically no exceptions.

While being rowed shoreward I noticed that the wind had quite died down, leaving a suffocation in the air that is difficult to explain; but I've felt something like it on a sultry summer day when the sky is black with slowly advancing clouds, when the birds have become too awed to chirp and every leaf in the trees hangs motionless. It is in these suspenses of unpleasant expectation, when at any moment the heavens will open with a hissing smash of fire and nature be turned to fury, that one breathes heavily. There is no other feeling like it, except the drag of torturing minutes before being called to make a speech, or to be whistled over the top into No Man's Land.

Our prow grated on the sand and in silence we began to unload. Back from the sloping beach grew a fringe of small machineel trees and palms; the beach and they, as well as I could judge, forming a kind of amphitheater to the water.

My men wanted to raise the canvas into a make-shift tent before returning for the second load, but I thought better of this and had them leave it as it was, wrapped about our guns and stowed with the other things beneath the palms. Until daylight showed how well our position might be screened from the islands, it were a short sighted business to stretch a tell-tale piece of white duck that could be seen for miles.

Already there were eerie whisperings of some disturbance in the sky. From the black forest far behind us could be detected faint restless noises, as if a myriad agitated spirits were scurrying hither and thither whipping their wings against the branches. Something more than an ordinary man's size blow was coming out of the southeast, so I tumbled the crew into their boat, charging them to pull right heartily and bring back Tommy, at least, before too late.

They must have got close to the Whim when a force, as sudden as it was at the moment unexpected, almost lifted me off my feet. Indeed, had I not possessed the presence of mind to fall flat upon the beach I should have gone kittering. In half a second the heavens were cluttered not only with screaming and tumbling winds but branches of large trees driven along as straws. I dug my toes and fingers into the sand, flattening out for dear life. Close upon the head of this hurricane came the deluge of rain, cloudburst after cloudburst. Then lightning was unchained, veritable shocks of fire, and no thunder out of hell could have been more appalling.

For perhaps a minute I had not been given a chance to think of the small boat, or the Whim, but struggling to raise my head I stared through the inky space eagerly awaiting the next flash. It came almost at once, bringing into image the Cove as if a million green calcium lights were focused there. This was but for an instant, yet such is the peculiar effect of lightning that in the following blackness each detail of the scene remained photographed upon my retinæ. I saw the turbulent waters apparently sweeping, as a mill race, out to sea; I saw a lone palm, that had formerly stood in dignified solitude upon a nearby point of land, now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella turned inside out. I saw the Whim, greenish white in a greenish foam, heeled over till her masts were all but on the waves and her mainsail, half torn from its boom, snapping in the wind. In this fashion she was being driven at breakneck speed across the Gulf. I thought—I tried to think—that I had seen a small boat being dragged behind. Surely my men had reached her!

But another flash, and still another, brought no greater assurance of this. Each showed the yacht farther away, more blurred by rain, until the distance became too great for me to make her out at all.