sap; the perfume of
newly-wrecked and ruined trees--the essence and soul of the artu, the
banyan and cocoa-palm cast upon the wind.

You would have found dead butterflies in the woods, dead birds too; but
in the great path of the storm you would have found dead butterflies'
wings, feathers, leaves frayed as if by fingers, branches of the aoa,
and sticks of the hibiscus broken into little fragments.

Powerful enough to rip a ship open, root up a tree, half ruin a city.
Delicate enough to tear a butterfly wing from wing--that is a cyclone.

Emmeline, wandering about in the woods with Dick on the day after the
storm, looking at the ruin of great tree and little bird, and
recollecting the land birds she had caught a glimpse of yesterday being
carried along safely by the storm out to sea to be drowned, felt a
great weight lifting from her heart. Mischance had come, and spared
them and the baby. The blue had spoken, but had not called them.

She felt that something--the something which we in civilisation call
Fate--was for the present gorged; and, without being annihilated, her
incessant hypochondriacal dread condensed itself into a point, leaving
her horizon sunlit and clear.

The cyclone had indeed treated them almost, one might say, amiably. It
had taken the house but that was a small matter, for it had left them
nearly all their small possessions. The tinder box and flint and steel
would have been a much more serious loss than a dozen houses, for,
without it, they would have had absolutely no means of making a fire.

If anything, the cyclone had been almost too kind to them; had let them
pay off too little of that mysterious debt they owed to the gods.

CHAPTER XVIII

A FALLEN IDOL

The next day Dick began to rebuild the house. He had fetched the
stay-sail from the reef and rigged up a temporary tent.

It was a great business cutting the canes and dragging them out in the
open. Emmeline helped; whilst Hannah, seated on the grass, played with
the bird that had vanished during the storm, but reappeared the evening
after.

The child and the bird had grown fast friends; they were friendly
enough even at first, but now the bird would sometimes let the tiny
hands clasp him right round his body--at least, as far as the hands
would go.

It is a rare experience for a man to hold a tame and unstruggling and
unfrightened bird in his hands; next to pressing a woman in his arms,
it is the pleasantest tactile sens