"I don't care who wrote it, only we've got to spin our web again. Oh, 'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the spider to the fly. 'Please 'm, where's the parlour?' says the fly. There, I'm a lunatic, but I feel so jolly at having caught those runaway oars. I say, are you dry? I am. That's one advantage of living in a tropical climate; if you get soaked you don't have to shiver while your things are dried at the fire. 'Homeless, ragged and tanned, who so contented as I?'" she sang, and Elizabeth, noticing the high spirits of her wild young sister, hoped that there wouldn't be a reaction, and that Tommy was not going to be ill.
CHAPTER XII
ALARMS AND DISCOVERIES
Contemplating the ruins of the hut they had built up with so much care, the girls felt a very natural chagrin. You have seen a child who has erected a fine house of bricks fly into a rage when the structure topples by its own weight, or at least look utterly woebegone, and leave the scattered bricks lying where they fell. Elizabeth Westmacott and her sisters felt very much the same disinclination to begin again. The site was a picture of disorder. Portions of the matting had been blown right away; other portions in shreds and tatters had found resting-places among the foliage of the surrounding trees and shrubs. Some of the canes of the roof dangled from the boughs, others littered the ground amid a tangle of creepers and leafage. No one could have supposed that only a few hours before the same place had been a model of neatness.
"It will take an age to tidy up," grumbled Tommy. "Is it worth while to bother about a hut again?"
"I don't like being without a roof over our heads," replied Elizabeth; "but we won't start yet if you don't feel inclined. Let us go and take a look round."
"We shall want some breadfruit for dinner," said Mary, "so we had better go that way. I dare say we shall find all we need on the ground."
They set off towards the breadfruit-trees. Everywhere there were signs of the violence of the storm, but they were surprised and interested to notice that the worst havoc had been wrought in almost a straight line across the island from south-west to north-east.
It was as though some huge giant had gone steadily forward wielding a monstrous scythe. The tornado had cut a clean path through the forest, leaving scarcely a tree standing over a wide space. Where there had been close, unbroken woodland was now a bare avenue, interrupted by the trunks of trees that had been thrown this way and that. Impressed as the girls had been with the fury of the tornado during the time of their exposure to it, its devastating power was brought home to them now much more strongly. They looked with awe upon its ravages.