shattering the latch. The white door knob crumbled in fragments to the
floor. The room's walls bulged like a gas balloon in the process of
sudden inflation. Then came a new sound like the rattle of musketry,
as the spray from a sea struck the wall of the house. Captain Lynch
looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot
cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious
pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light
building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank
down, its floor at an angle of ten degrees.

Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He
noted that it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he
threw himself on the sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain
Lynch, driven like a wisp of straw, sprawled over him. Two of the
Aorai's sailors, leaving a cocoanut tree to which they had been
clinging, came to their aid, leaning against the wind at impossible
angles and fighting and clawing every inch of the way.

The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the
sailors, by means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up
the trunk, a few feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the
top of the tree, fifty feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length
of rope around the base of an adjacent tree and stood looking on. The
wind was frightful. He had never dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea
breached across the atoll, wetting him to the knees ere it subsided
into the lagoon. The sun had disappeared, and a lead-colored twilight
settled down. A few drops of rain, driving horizontally, struck him.
The impact was like that of leaden pellets. A splash of salt spray
struck his face. It was like the slap of a man's hand. His cheeks
stung, and involuntary tears of pain were in his smarting eyes.