Whilst Wolston was busy charging the pilot with a multitude of messages for his son, Mrs. Becker was invoking the blessings of Heaven upon the heads of her two boys; praying that the hour might be deferred that was to separate her from these idols of her soul.  Becker himself, upon whom his position, as head of the family, imposed the obligation of exhibiting, at least outwardly, more courage, instilled into their minds such principles of truth and rules of conduct as the solemnity of the moment was calculated to engrave on their hearts.

The dial now marked three o’clock, tropical time.  Willis, wiping, with the cuff of his jacket, a drop that trickled from the corner of his eye, laid hold of his seal-skin sou’-wester as a signal of immediate departure.  Ernest and Frank were bending their heads to receive the parting benediction of their parents, when suddenly a fierce torrent of wind shook the gallery of Rockhouse to its foundation, and uprooted some of the bamboo columns by which it was supported.

“Only a squall,” said Willis quietly.

“A squall!” exclaimed Becker, “what do you call a hurricane then?”

“Oh, a hurricane, I mean a downright reefer, all square and close-hauled, that is a very different affair; but, after all, this begins to look very like the real article.”

Now came a succession of gusts, each succeeding one more powerful than its predecessor, till every beam of the gallery bent and quivered; dense copper-colored clouds appeared in the atmosphere, rolling against each other, and disengaging by their shock, the thunder and lightnings.  Then fell, not the slender needles of water we call rain, but veritable floods, that were to our heaviest European showers what the cataracts of the Rhine, at Staubach, or the falls of Niagara, are to the gushings of a sylvan rivulet.  In a few minutes the Jackal river had converted the valley into a lake, in which the plantations and buildings appeared to be afloat, and rendering egress from Rockhouse nearly impossible.

However much of a colorist Willis might be, he could not have painted a storm with the eloquence of the elements that had cut short his observation.

“You will not attempt to embark in weather like this?” inquired Mrs. Becker anxiously.

“My duty it is to be on board,” replied the Pilot.

“The craft that ventures to take you there will get swamped twenty times on the way,” observed Becker.

“The worst of it is, the wind is from the east, and evidently carries waterspouts with it.  These waterspouts strike a ship without the slightest warning, play amongst the rigging, whirl the sails about like feathers—­sometimes carry them off bodily, or, if they do not do that, tear them to shreds and shiver the masts.  In either case, the consequences are disagreeable.”

“A reason for you to be thankful you are safe on shore with us!” remarked Mrs. Wolston.

“It is all very well for you, Mrs. Wolston, and you, Mrs. Becker, to talk in that way; your business in life is that of wives and mothers.  But what will the Lords of the Admiralty say, when they hear that the sloop Nelson was wrecked whilst Master Willis, the boatswain, was skulking on shore like a land-rat?”