“I’ll come,” said Kingsnorth stupidly. It was evident that he was not fully awake, but he staggered to his feet and came to the open casement. A new blast came from the sea, and they felt the floor heave under their feet.
“Back!” cried Mrs. Maclaughlin, seizing Charlotte’s hand and dragging her backward along the veranda. “We have done what we could. O man! man! the door! the door!” For Kingsnorth was still fumbling with the window, pushing back another shutter with the evident intention of getting out that way. In the outstreaming glow of light, they saw the veranda supports sway and heave. Then came a shriek in the air, a deafening roar, the snap of powerful supports strained to breaking; and, as Kingsnorth clambered heavily through the window, the same gust that tipped the cottage over like a child’s house of blocks, sent both women to their faces on the wet ground.
Charlotte never could remember how long it was before she was struggling to her feet, clambering over wrecked bamboo flooring, calling aloud to the man, who, she, knew, must have gone down with the house. Mrs. Maclaughlin was by her side, saying “O my Lord!” at intervals. They could see a crimson glow waxing brighter where the overturned petroleum lamp had set fire to the wrecked house; but it was not till its light grew brilliant, that they saw the man they sought. He seemed to be wedged between an upheaval of the bamboo flooring and the leaning wall of the house. His forehead was gashed and he was unconscious.
Charlotte’s training stood her well, and it was she who bent over him and tried to lift him. She turned a white face, then, to Mrs. Maclaughlin.
“A piece of bamboo has entered his side,” she said. “We must break away these pieces and free him. He will be roasted if we are not quick.”
Fortunately the supports of the floor as well as the floor itself, were of bamboo. At Charlotte’s belt there hung her bunch of housekeeper’s keys, and a knife, not the ordinary penknife, but a real household necessity, combining several domestic utensils. Mrs. Maclaughlin owned one like it, and, in an instant, both women were hacking at the stiff rattan fibres, working with frantic haste as the dry suali lining of the house burst into roaring flame. They tore away the long bamboo slats, but at the last, it was Charlotte who drew out the broken piece which had entered Kingsnorth’s breast. He moved and groaned.
“Is he coming to?” asked Mrs. Maclaughlin, peering but not stopping. Charlotte shook her head. “I hope not, yet,” she said. “We must drag him back out of these ruins.”
By the glow of the burning dwelling, the two women, now dragging, now lifting, took Kingsnorth out of the wreckage, and succeeded in carrying him some fifty feet along the path that led to Charlotte’s home. There a clump of pandan bushes made a shelter against the wind, which, as if satisfied with the havoc it had wrought, ceased for fully five minutes. The crimson radiance of the fire lighted the dripping bushes, cast its demon flickers on the ocean’s rage, and sent leaping shadows among the broken-stemmed cocoanut trees. Charlotte gazed wearily in the direction of the native village.
“They can’t be asleep,” she said. “Why don’t they come?”
“Come!” echoed Mrs. Maclaughlin. “They’ll not come; or, if they do, it will be with evil in their hearts. They’ve got two Japanese rogues to lead them, and they think Mac and Martin have gone to the bottom; and when they find that this man is disabled—” She paused.