WAS A HURRICANE. Then he would go off into another stupor.

The height of the hurricane endured from eleven at night till three in
the morning, and it was at eleven that the tree in which clung Mapuhi
and his women snapped off. Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon,
still clutching his daughter Ngakura. Only a South Sea islander could
have lived in such a driving smother. The pandanus tree, to which he
attached himself, turned over and over in the froth and churn; and it
was only by holding on at times and waiting, and at other times
shifting his grips rapidly, that he was able to get his head and
Ngakura's to the surface at intervals sufficiently near together to
keep the breath in them. But the air was mostly water, what with
flying spray and sheeted rain that poured along at right angles to the
perpendicular.

It was ten miles across the lagoon to the farther ring of sand. Here,
tossing tree trunks, timbers, wrecks of cutters, and wreckage of
houses, killed nine out of ten of the miserable beings who survived
the passage of the lagoon. Half-drowned, exhausted, they were hurled
into this mad mortar of the elements and battered into formless flesh.
But Mapuhi was fortunate. His chance was the one in ten; it fell to
him by the freakage of fate. He emerged upon the sand, bleeding from a
score of wounds.

Ngakura's left arm was broken; the fingers of her right hand were
crushed; and cheek and forehead were laid open to the bone. He
clutched a tree that yet stood, and clung on, holding the girl and
sobbing for air, while the waters of the lagoon washed by knee-high
and at times waist-high.