It broke in snow and smoke, sheeting into the lagoon, and was followed by two others. That was the climax. As the terror came, so it went, dying gradually down, till at last nothing was left but the old eternal murmur of the surf.
“Well,” said Kearney, “that beats all.—Earthquake?—No, sir. I’m thinking there’s been some big storm up north there, one of them cyclones, and the push of it has come down pilin’ up against tide an’ current. Lord help the schooner if she’s met it. The sea’s big still; listen to that surf. Shall us run over to the reef, sir, and have a look?”
They took the dinghy. The passage was easy in the moonlight, and on the reef, when they reached it, the coral was still drenched and the rock pools over-flooded.
On the outer beach the rollers were still coming in, no longer gigantic, yet great, marching beneath the moon to break in thunderbursts that seemed ruled by the beat of a metronome; marching from the north, where, against the sunset of the day before, the sails of the Ranatonga had passed from sight beyond the sea-line.
BOOK II
THE CHILDREN RETURN
CHAPTER I
TIME PASSES