The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

160 THE FOOT OF TIME
"Ah! la, la, oh! la, la! Did I not say eet? Eet
is alive, it lives. It is a devil. Throw eet away,
Bruce. It frighten me!"
Even as Molota spoke, an unusually loud surf
could be heard pounding over the atoll into the
lagoon. There was no wind to account for it, and
both listened.
"The sea, it am angry, for why? Eet is not
windy!"
"We shall get the wind soon enough," Bruce
prophesied. Listen!"
Even as he spoke a prodigous wall of water, miles
in length, struck the outer reef, and then from the
north-east a gentle breeze sprang up, then grew.
Bruce glanced at his pocket barometer. It read
28.65, and falling.
"By gee! I believe we are in for it, Molota,"
he warned her. "You'd better go quickly and warn
your people. Tell them I know by my magic."
The boy laughed, but it was a hollow laugh, no
depth in it, for the little clock face fell back as
though it had been shaken-28.27. "Tell the
natives to get back from the sea and shelter themselves.
Say it's going to blow hell soon!"
"Oui, Monsieur, I got vite, den I come back to
be with you, my own darlinggee." The girl disappeared,
and soon the wailing of the women could
be heard. They evidently believed Bruce's warning;
had experienced it before, and now recognised
the symptoms, even without the white man's
prognostication.
By the time Molota had returned, the little pocket
THE FOOT OF TIME 161
barometer read 28.4, and Bruce knew that the
island was in for a most furious hurricane—a
hurricane which would sweep away homes, fell
trees, and probably drown scores of them.
Mountainous seas were now roaring in, and the
wind's rising velocity drowned all other sounds.
Their door crashed to, then came down with a
smash at their feet.
"Come," said Bruce. "We will find a cave; it's
about the only thing to shelter us from the wind."
He put his arm about the girl, and together they
staggered further back into the bush away from
the sea. They were ascending the foothills of Tuamonti;
the mountain sheltered them from the
north-east gale. In the distance they looked down
to the beach. Some of the natives were taking to
the cocoanut trees, lashing themselves to them with
bits of rope.
"Why the devil don't they come back—away
from the sea under the rocks?" Bruce asked Molota
as best he could speak or even breathe for the lungsplitting
gale.
"Too much frightened of rocks fall," the girl
told him. "We 'ave 'ad such beefore. Natives
buried alive in rock fall. Ugh!" Molota shivered
at the very recollection of the horror. "Me, I
frightened, too, of such rock, but with you, my
'usband, me, I not fear anytink at alls now."
They reached the cave which Bruce had in mind.
It faced south-west. The wind was behind them,
entirely cut off by the mountain. From this point
of vantage they could see everything—see more