roof. It did not come soothingly and in a steady downpour, but
brokenly, like the rush of waves sweeping over a rough beach. He
turned on the pillow and shut his eyes again with the same
impotent and rebellious sense of disappointment that he used to
feel when he had wakened as a boy and found it storming on his
holiday, and he tried to sleep once more in the hope that when he
again awoke the sun would be shining in his eyes; but the storm
only slackened and did not cease, and the rain continued to fall
with dreary, relentless persistence. The men climbed the muddy
road to the Palms, and viewed in silence the wreck which the
night had brought to their plants and garden paths. Rivulets of
muddy water had cut gutters over the lawn and poured out from
under the veranda, and plants and palms lay bent and broken, with
their broad leaves bedraggled and coated with mud. The harbor
and the encircling mountains showed dimly through a curtain of
warm, sticky rain. To something that Langham said of making the
best of it, MacWilliams replied, gloomily, that he would not be
at all surprised if the ladies refused to leave the ship and
demanded to be taken home immediately. ``I am sorry,'' Clay
said, simply; ``I wanted them to like it.''

The men walked back to the office in grim silence, and took turns
in watching with a glass the arms of the semaphore, three miles
below, at the narrow opening of the bay. Clay smiled nervously
at himself, with a sudden sinking at the heart, and with a hot
blush of pleasure, as he thought of how often he had looked at
its great arms out lined like a mast against the sky, and thanked
it in advance for telling him that she was near. In the harbor
below, the vessels lay with bare yards and empty decks, the
wharves were deserted, and only an occasional small boat moved