All morning it fell. At noon it registered forty degrees. The wind still swept a gale that whistled and shrieked at the corners of the house, and the three women passed the morning in Charlotte’s room, shivering about the open fire-place. Pete spent his day chopping and bringing in arm-loads of fat pine wood. All the sense of dissatisfaction with Aden returned. Desolate grey sand is a hideous exchange for sward, and orange trees look like toys from a Noah’s ark.
At dinner there was a furrow between King’s straight, dark brows. “It’s thirty-eight,” he told his father, “and falling. It’s clearing, too.”
Afterwards he was talking to Pete in the hall.
“No, sir,” reiterated Pete, “we’s too far below the line, ain’t never heard of sech a thing down here.”
At four o’clock King came in to say he was going to town. “It’s down to thirty-four,” he told his father. “I’m going in and telegraph up the river for reports.”
“And what then, son?” asked the Captain. “What can you do?”
It was a hitherto unexperienced danger threatening Aden. But youth cannot sit and wait. Alexina, from the window in Charlotte’s room, saw King William fling himself on his horse at the gate and gallop off. The wind had ceased. The live-oaks on either side of the old iron gate stood motionless, their moss hanging in dreary, sombre lengths. There was no sound of bird or insect. And it was cold—cold. Alexina had a jacket over her woollen dress, for Aden houses are not built for cold, which poured in at casements, beneath doors, at keyholes. Molly, on the couch drawn up to the fire, coughed and coughed again. Alexina went to her. “I’m cold,” she complained; “and how dreary it is.”
It had cleared and the sky was a pale, chilly blue. The sun set in a yellow pallor. The night fell.
King came in and warmed his hands at the parlour fire. Alexina and Charlotte had come down now.
“Thirty-two,” he told his father, “and falling.”