"Very un-sanitary," said Whinney, "a blackbird ... in the spring ... very un-sanitary."
We laughed feebly.
Suddenly, as they do in the tropics, an extraordinary thing happened. A simoon, a monsoon and a typhoon met, head on, at the exact corner of the equator and the 180th meridian. We hadn't noticed one of them,—they had given us no warning or signal of any kind. Before we knew it they were upon us!
I have been in any one of the three separately many a time. In '95 off the Blue Canary Islands I was caught in an octoroon, one of those eight-sided storms, that spun our ship around like a top, and killed all the canaries for miles about—the sea was strewn with their bodies. But this!
"Below," bellowed Captain Triplett, and we made a dive for the hatch. William Henry Thomas was the last in, having been in the bow setting off a pinwheel, when the blow hit us. We dragged him in. My last memory is of Triplett driving a nail back of the hatch-cover to keep it from sliding.
How long we were whirled in that devil's grip of the elements I cannot say. It may have been a day—it may have been a week. We were all below, battened down ... tight. At times we lost consciousness—at times we were sick—at times, both. I remember standing on Triplett's face and peering out through a salt-glazed port-hole at a world of waterspouts, as thick as forest trees, dancing, melting, crashing upon us. I sank back. This was the end ...
Here, against the background of a closely woven hedge of southern hornbeam (Carpinus Tropicalis), we see that eminent scientist, Reginald Whinney, in the act of discovering, for the first time in any country, a magnificent specimen of wild modesty (Tiarella nuda), which grows in great profusion throughout the Filbert Islands. This tiny floweret is distantly related, by marriage, to the European sensitive plant (Plantus pudica) but is infinitely more sensitive and reticent. An illustration of this amazing quality is found in the fact that its snowy blossoms blush a deep crimson under the gaze of the human eye. At the touch of the human hand the flowers turn inside-out and shrink to minute proportions. Dr. Whinney attempted in vain to transplant specimens of this fragile creation to our old-world botanical gardens but found the conditions of modern plant life an insuperable barrier. The seeds of wild modesty absolutely refuse to germinate in either Europe or America.]