Just as they had finished salting the pork, and were about to stow the boat again, Charlie, looking up at the tree tops, remarked that the wind seemed to have fallen very light 'all of a sudden.'
Bill was on the alert at once. 'I'll have a look outside;' and he walked down to the mouth of the creek, from where he could have a good view of the sky and the sea horizon as well. He came back at a run.
'There's going to be a blow--a big blow from the eastward. Like as not it'll last for five days; three days for certain, anyway. We'll have to snug down here until it's over. Let's get the boat up as far as we can; there'll be a thundering big sea rolling right into the creek before night. Heavy rain is coming too, and we'll have to house in and weather it out.'
His suggestions were carried out as quickly as possible. Everything movable was first taken out of the boat, which was hauled still further up the little creek, and the stores were carried up to the fallen tree, and placed under its buttress, on the dry leaves which covered the ground. Then, leaving Charlie at the camp, Tom and Bill set off in search of fallen coco-nut branches to make a roofing. In an hour they had collected enough, and Bill at once set to work to make thatching, which he did with such speed and cleverness that Tom was lost in admiration at his resourcefulness. By four o'clock in the afternoon they had made the buttress of the fallen maso'i into a perfectly rainproof house, open to the westward, and protected at the back from the coming gale by the mighty trunk of the tree itself.
By this time the atmosphere had become intensely close and oppressive, and every now and then a warm gust of wind would sway the branches overhead. The calls of the forest birds had ceased, but vast numbers of ocean birds came flying in from seaward, filling the air with their hoarse, screaming notes.
'It's coming presently,' said Bill to Tom; 'don't you hear the sea making a booming noise? It always does in these places when it is coming on to blow from the eastward. When the natives of the Tokelau[#] Islands hear the sea make that sound, they know it means heavy weather from the eastward or the northward, and always haul up their canoes and secure their houses from the matagi afa,[#] as they call it.'
[#] The Union, Ellice, and Gilbert Islands are now generally termed Tokelau by the inhabitants of the eastern islands of Polynesia. Formerly, however, only the low-lying islands of the Union Group were meant by the term.
[#] Hurricane.
Before Tom could answer there came a droning, humming sound from the sea, and then a wild and deafening clamour, as the first squall of the coming hurricane smote the island, and ripped and tore its way through the forest.
'That's the first lot,' shouted Bill in Tom's ear; 'now we'll get some rain, and after that another squall or two and more rain, and then it'll settle down to business properly, and blow like forty thousand cats yowling at once. I'm glad we put in here.'