Billy looked at him wonderingly. The grizzled veteran of the sea and mountain looked worried.
“What’s the matter, Ben?” demanded Billy, struck by the singular aspect of Ben’s countenance.
“Matter?” replied the sailor, “matter enough. This is only a Dutchman’s hurricane to what’s in the wind. Listen! Do you hear that?”
He held up a finger to command attention.
Billy listened and to his ears there was borne, in a lull of the storm, a sound like the far-off whining of thousands of tortured animals. It was like nothing he had ever heard before.
Suddenly he jumped to his feet with an alarmed yell.
“There’s something under my cot!” he cried.
“It’s shaking it!” he shouted the next minute.
“There ain’t nothing under yer cot but the solid earth, mate,” replied the sailor gravely, “and it’s that what you feels a’ shaking. It’s the terremoto and it’s going to be a bad ’un.”
“The terremoto?”