and criss-crossing like matches. He was amazed at the power of the
wind. His own tree was swaying perilously, one woman was wailing and
clutching the little girl, who in turn still hung on to the cat.

The man, holding the other child, touched Raoul's arm and pointed. He
looked and saw the Mormon church careering drunkenly a hundred feet
away. It had been torn from its foundations, and wind and sea were
heaving and shoving it toward the lagoon. A frightful wall of water
caught it, tilted it, and flung it against half a dozen cocoanut
trees. The bunches of human fruit fell like ripe cocoanuts. The
subsiding wave showed them on the ground, some lying motionless,
others squirming and writhing. They reminded him strangely of ants. He
was not shocked. He had risen above horror. Quite as a matter of
course he noted the succeeding wave sweep the sand clean of the human
wreckage. A third wave, more colossal than any he had yet seen, hurled
the church into the lagoon, where it floated off into the obscurity to
leeward, half-submerged, reminding him for all the world of a Noah's
ark.

He looked for Captain Lynch's house, and was surprised to find it
gone. Things certainly were happening quickly. He noticed that many of
the people in the trees that still held had descended to the ground.
The wind had yet again increased. His own tree showed that. It no
longer swayed or bent over and back. Instead, it remained practically
stationary, curved in a rigid angle from the wind and merely
vibrating. But the vibration was sickening. It was like that of a
tuning-fork or the tongue of a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the
vibration that made it so bad. Even though its roots held, it could
not stand the strain for long. Something would have to break.