CHAPTER XV

Sun Li preferred the open sea to long calls at the various ports outlined on their itinerary, so they spent very little of the time on land, after all. They stopped at Charleston, down in South Carolina, and all went ashore to walk along the beautiful Battery, and later through the picturesque old city—creating not a little comment and excitement with their decidedly exotic procession, and the fact of the big tea clipper putting in at a port where clippers did not usually call. But they did not stay, returning on board within a few hours, and setting sail for Savannah that same afternoon.

The latter city, with its wide, tree-lined streets, and flower-filled parks delighted them all; it was here Erica saw her first great trees hung with the long, trailing gray moss. But His Excellency was restless to be back on the _Sea Gull_, and as they had done at their first stop, they sailed again the day of their arrival.

From Savannah, Captain Eric set a course for Cuba, and on the second day out from the Georgia coast, abruptly and out of a smiling summer sky, their first bad weather descended upon the voyagers.

Summer is the time in the West Indies for hurricanes, and at the sudden dropping of the barometer, Captain Eric became instantly anxious. As far as the rest of the party could see, though, there had been no visible change in the weather. The skies were still brightly and vividly blue, and the waves no higher than a long, lazy swell. Even the wind had not freshened. Instead it had dropped to an almost dead calm.

Then, little by little, the sky began to cloud over—clouds seeming to leap into sight quite suddenly, where only a short while before there had been nothing but blue. The _Sea Gull_, in spite of her enormous spread of canvas, designed for speed (for the tea clippers were racing ships, each seeking to outdistance all rivals in her hurry to land a cargo first in the market), could make little headway. But presently all on board were conscious that she was rolling noticeably. The swells were higher now, and seemed to increase in size endlessly; they were oily-looking, without crests or foam, and came on in regular undulations, lifting the ship with a queer, sinister effect of upheaval that grew to have more and more of a threat of violence behind it.

And then, all in a minute, the wind arrived—a mighty, moving wall of wind that had an impact like a solid substance when it struck the clipper. Accompanying it there came darkness, and a great pandemonium of sound: shriekings and moanings, and strange growling, hissing noises like nothing Erica had ever heard before, or imagined.

The crew were in a frenzy of ordered activity on deck, lowering the huge sails and making everything fast. Even Lis had duties, and Erica, finding no one of whom she could ask questions, retired disconsolately to her own little cabin, where she found Milly, pale as a little black-garbed ghost, on her knees before her bunk.

“Oh, Ricky,” the girl cried, thankfully, on her entrance, “if someone hadn’t come soon I guess I’d have _died_! Cousin Callie’s looking after Cousin Charity in their cabin, and they have Barbee with them. There wasn’t any room for me, so I—Do you think the ship can possibly stand up against such a wind? It’s—it’s like one of those dreadful things you dream in nightmares. Oooh! Listen to that awful shrieking! It sounds—Ricky, I’m—_scared_.” She whispered the last in a shamed little half-voice, but with obvious sincerity, and Erica, clinging to the door-jamb to keep her feet in the heavy rolling, tried to smile reassuringly.

“Trust father, Milly. He’s been in some pretty bad storms, and the _Sea Gull_ and he have always come through safely,” she said, bravely. “Probably it seems worse to us because it’s our first experience with a hurricane.”

“Oh—is it _that_?” Poor Milly wailed, sliding across the small cabin with the next lurch of the ship, and clutching desperately at Erica’s outstretched hand just in time to save herself from a head-on collision with Sun Li’s teakwood chest.

“I—guess so,” Erica said, briefly. “I heard Mr. Peterson, the mate, call it that to Lis a moment ago.” She sat down on the floor, one arm about Milly, bracing both of them with her knees against the door-jamb and her back pressed against the low side of the bunk.

“Hold on to me,” she advised, “or we’ll both be black and blue tomorrow.”

“If we’re not at the bottom of the sea, you mean,” Milly said, bitterly.

They remained on the floor, clinging to each other for what seemed to both girls endless ages. The terrifying violence of the wind seemed to be increasing, and the plunging of the ship grew worse as the hours passed. They did not attempt to leave the cabin to go in search of any of the rest of their party, since it was all they could do to keep themselves from being knocked about, with the chance of serious injury, where they were. For the same reason, probably, no one else came to them.

There was no thought of the usual evening meal. No one had any appetite for it, even if it could have been prepared and served. To the unnatural darkness of the storm was gradually added the natural darkness of approaching night. In the tiny, redecorated cabin, neither Erica nor Milly could see their surroundings. Each knew that the other was there, close—comfortingly close—by the feel of their arms holding and bracing each other against the incessant rolling and pitching of the clipper.

And then, at the very height of the storm, there came a sudden lull, a mystifying dying down of the wind that was somehow even more alarming than its former violence. The _Sea Gull_ still pitched on the huge waves, but it seemed as if the hurricane had blown itself out, with the uncanny instantaneousness of magic.

Erica released her protecting hold on Milly, and sat up, breathing unevenly, and stretching cramped arms and legs.

“Perhaps this is the storm center,” she offered, doubtfully. “I’ve heard there’s always a spot of dead calm, right at the heart of a hurricane or cyclone. It lasts only a little while, and then you come out into the opposite side, where the wind’s even worse than before.”

“Oh—oh, Ricky!” Milly said, in consternation. “You mean—all—_that_ has to start right up again? Let’s see if we can’t get to Cousin Callie,” she suggested, eagerly, jumping to her feet, “before it begins.”

“All right,” Erica agreed, and was preparing to rise to her feet also, when there was a loud, grating, scraping noise that seemed to come from underneath the ship herself; a _slithering_, rumbling sound as if the keel were being forced across an uneven, rocky surface.

The two girls had time for no more than an instinctive clutch at each other, and two frightened gasps, before the grating underneath them was followed by a rending crash that rocked the _Sea Gull_ more cruelly than either wind or waves had yet done.

The suddenness of it flung them back helplessly on the cabin floor.

It couldn’t have been much over five minutes before they heard hurrying steps in the corridor, and Lis, a lighted lantern in his hand, stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the blackness behind him.

He lifted his lantern so its light should shine farther into the cabin, and uttered an alarmed ejaculation at sight of the two girls huddled on the floor against the bunk.

”_Rick!_” he cried out sharply, then, “Milly! Are you hurt?”

The clipper was not rolling at all now—a fact which seemed suddenly more ominous than all that had gone before. The girls scrambled hurriedly to their feet and caught at Lister’s arm, one on each side of him.

“What’s happened?” Erica cried. “Did we hit something?”

Lis nodded soberly. “Ran on a reef, they say. We don’t know what the damage to the ship is yet, of course. Uncle Eric sent me down to get you all on deck. It’s too dark to see anything, but he seems to think we’ve hit on some outstanding coral reef of one of these islands.”

He had turned back along the corridor as he spoke, Erica and Milly following closely at his heels. The same thought was in both girls’ minds—did the summons to come at once on deck mean taking to the lifeboats? Was the _Sea Gull_ in as bad a case as _that_?

Up on deck there was no confusion. Mrs. Folger was already there, standing by Captain Eric, with little Barbee hanging to her skirts. Miss Charity had been carried up by two of the sailors, and sat on a coil of rope, her face set and white in the light of a near-by lantern, but quite calm. Sun Li’s gorgeous sedan chair with its coolie bearers behind and before had been placed beside Miss Charity’s rope-seat, but the Governor himself was standing at the captain’s side, leaning on the arm of little Dr. Wu and observing placidly the scene about them.

Erica ran to her father and slipped her arm through his, grateful for the comforting strength of the big, whipcord muscles under his blue cloth sleeve.

“Are we—wrecked, father?” she asked in a small, not-too-steady voice, pressing closer.

“No, no,” he returned, quickly and reassuringly. “We’ve run on a reef, sure enough, but the old clipper’s not taking in any water—we’ve not even strained her seams, praise the Lord! We’ll just have to wait for morning to find out where we are and how we’re to get afloat again.”

The mate had come up on deck now, and drew near the captain to say something in a lowered voice. Captain Eric listened gravely, and then nodded.

“You can all go below and turn in with easy minds,” he addressed the anxious little group about him. “A second, more thorough examination shows no water coming in. We’ve escaped by a miracle, no less. We certainly drove aground hard enough to have ripped her open, by the feel of it.”

“But the wind—it’s beginning again,” Erica whispered, drawing his ear down to her lips, for she did not want the others to hear. “Aren’t we in the storm center of a hurricane, and won’t the wind be just as bad again in a few minutes?”

“Probably, my wise little daughter,” Captain Eric said, with a tender smile for her worried face. “But as well as we can make out in the darkness, we have been blown into some sort of harbor—where, I’ve no means of telling till daybreak. There are small, scattered islands all about us, and we’ve doubtless been driven aground on one of them—in the lee of some promontory, I should judge, or into a natural, protected harbor. We are safe enough for tonight. The hand of the Lord has piloted us, in our need, and it will become us all to give Him due thanks before we sleep.”

The wind was once more howling and shrieking in all its former violence, but evidently the _Sea Gull_ had, as her captain declared, found sanctuary in some sheltered inlet or harbor, for the full force of the storm seemed to pass high overhead as if deflected from her by an intervening barrier. The waves washed over her decks from time to time, but did not succeed in dislodging her from the rocky ledge she had run on. She did not even rock or bump against the reef, but rested in her new-found berth as securely as if built on a strong and safe foundation.

After a little, rather anxious lingering on deck, ready for any new surprises that might come, the passengers of the _Sea Gull_ finally accepted her captain’s verdict and retired below to their several cabins, reassured as to the immediate future.

The younger members of the party slept soundly, because even in the face of danger youth can sleep the clock around if left undisturbed. Erica’s last waking memory of that night was the continued shrilling whistle of the wind through her porthole, and the intermittent crash of waves along the ship’s side. The next thing she knew was a flood of early morning sunshine pouring in that same porthole and lying in a pool of bright gold on the golden Chinese carpet. The world outside was as peaceful and newly-washed and brilliant as if no noisy, murderous wind and battering waves had waged a losing battle the night before for the _Sea Gull_ and her human cargo.

Milly Thorne was still asleep, and Erica, without waking her, slipped out of her bunk and padded across the soft, velvet pile of the carpet to the porthole and peered eagerly out. The sea had gone down in the night, and now lay spread out in gentle heaving bright-green swells from the porthole through which Erica was looking to the still greener shore of a low forest-clad hillside only a few hundred yards away.

Erica stared, fascinated by the suddenness of the land’s appearance, and the dense, strange jungle growth of trees, underbrush, and creepers that matted the hill almost to the water’s edge.

“Father was right,” Erica told herself, excitedly. “That must be an island—a real tropical island.” She stared a moment longer, then whirled on her bare heel, crossed the tiny cabin in two tomboy strides, and, snatching at her clothes, began to dress with fumbling, hurrying fingers.