Obviously, if this writer be correct, there would be no use in our attempting to enlighten those “who can form no conception” of the thing. Nevertheless, in the hope that the writer referred to may be as ignorant on this point as he is in regard to the “wishes” of “heaven and earth,” we will attempt a brief description of the event which put such a sudden stop to what may be called the Toc-baby-picnic.
For several days previously the weather had been rather cloudy, and there had been a few showers; but this would not have checked the proceedings if the wind had not risen so as to render it dangerous to launch the canoes into the surf on the beach of Bounty Bay. As the day advanced it blew a gale, and Toc congratulated himself on having resisted the urgent advice of the volatile Dan McCoy to stick at nothing.
About sunset the gale increased to a hurricane. John Adams, with several of the older youths, went to the edge of the precipice, near the eastern part of the village, where a deep ravine ran up into the mountains. There, under the shelter of a rock, they discussed the situation.
“Lucky that you didn’t go, Toc,” said Adams, pointing at the sea, whose waves were lashed and churned into seething foam.
“Yes, thanks be to God,” replied Thursday.
“It will blow harder yet, I think,” said Charlie Christian, who had grown into a tall stripling of about seventeen. He resembled his father in the bright expression of his handsome face and in the vigour of his lithe frame.
“Looks like it, Charlie. It minds me o’ a regular typhoon we had when you was quite a babby, that blew down a lot o’ trees, an’ almost took the roofs off our huts.”
As he spoke it seemed as if the wind grew savage at having been recognised, for it came round the corner of the rock with a tremendous roar, and nearly swept Adams’s old seafaring hat into the rising sea.
“I’d ha’ bin sorry to lose ’ee,” muttered John, as he thrust the glazed and battered covering well down on his brows. “I wore you in the Bounty, and I expect, with care, to make you last out my time, an’ leave you as a legacy to my son George.”
“Look-out, father!” shouted Matt Quintal and Jack Mills in the same breath.