"And tell me now, Captain Cawdor, all about this Señor Sarpinto. Do you know, captain, I'm strangely interested in this man. And what is more, his very name seems familiar to me. But where I have met him, or how or when, is to me a mystery. I must dream over it, and—yes, and pray over it. Yet somehow I think Sarpinto is mixed up in our history."
Then Captain Cawdor told them all he knew.
* * * * * *
"Why, Fred," said Frank, "the wind is rising! Listen!"
The wind was undoubtedly getting up. The canvas of the rude tent began to flap, and mingled with the boom of the breakers on the shore came the steadier roar of the breeze in the trees overhead.
In these regions storms come on at times with terrible suddenness, and rage with wondrous force. And this occasion proved no exception.
Half an hour after the wind had commenced to moan through the leaves of the pandanus forest, the storm was at its height, accompanied by such terrible thunder and such vivid lightning as none of our castaways had ever experienced before. Anon the rain came down in torrents, but the wind lost none of its force.
All that night the hurricane raged, and for the first time since they had come to the island our heroes knew what it was to feel cold. They were wet too, as well as cold, for the frail impromptu tent proved but a poor protection against the violence of so awful a storm.
Towards the earlier hours, despite the incessant noise, all must have slept, and it was broad daylight before they again awoke.
Fred sat up rubbing his eyes, and for a time wondering where he was. Then all the strange events of the previous day rushed back to his mind, and he got up and staggered out.