lid, sharply defined strip of dark-coloured, wind-vexed water.
In advance of this strip, like skirmishers, were flashes of windflaws.
Behind this strip, a quarter of a mile in width, was a strip of what
seemed glassy calm. Next came another dark strip of wind, and behind
that the lagoon was all crisping, boiling whiteness.

"What is that calm streak?" Mulhall asked.

"Calm," Warfield answered.

"But it travels as fast as the wind," was the other's objection.

"It has to, or it would be overtaken and it wouldn't be any calm. It's
a double-header, I saw a big squall like that off Savaii once. A regular
double-header. Smash! it hit us, then it lulled to nothing, and smashed
us a second time. Stand by and hold on! Here she is on top of us. Look
at the _Roberta!_"

The Roberta, lying nearest to the wind at slack chains, was swept off
broadside like a straw. Then her chains brought her up, bow on to the
wind, with an astonishing jerk. Schooner after schooner, the _Malahini_
with them, was now sweeping away with the first gust and fetching up
on taut chains. Mulhall and several of the Kanakas were taken off their
feet when the _Malahini_ jerked to her anchors.

And then there was no wind. The flying calm streak had reached
them. Grief lighted a match, and the unshielded flame burned without
flickering in the still air. A very dim twilight prevailed. The
cloud-sky, lowering as it had been for hours, seemed now to have
descended quite down upon the sea.

The Roberta tightened to her chains when the second head of the
hurricane hit, as did schooner after schooner in swift succession. The
sea, white with fury, boiled in tiny, spitting wavelets. The deck of the
_Malahini_ vibrated under the men's feet. The taut-stretched halyards
beat a tattoo against the masts, and all the rigging, as if smote by
some mighty hand, set up a wild thrumming. It was impossible to face the
wind and breathe. Mulhall, crouching with the others behind the shelter
of the cabin, discovered this, and his lungs were filled in an instant
with so great a volume of driven air which he could not expel that he
nearly strangled ere he could turn his head away.

"It's incredible," he gasped, but no one heard him.

Hermann and several Kanakas were crawling for'ard on hands and knees to
let go the third anchor. Grief touched Captain Warfield and pointed to
the _Roberta_. She was dragging down upon them. Warfield put his mouth
to Grief's ear and shouted:

"