Dolphin Island - Arthur C. Clarke [48]
though they could not, as yet, do much about it.
The island had known many other storms, and the prevailing mood was excitement and alertness, rather than alarm. Luckily, the tide would be out when the hurricane reached its peak, so there was no danger of waves sweeping over the island—as had happened elsewhere in the Pacific. All through the day, Johnny was helping with the safety precautions. Nothing movable could be left in the open; windows had to be boarded over and boats drawn up as far as possible on the beach. The Flying Fish was secured to four heavy anchors, and to make doubly certain that she did not move, ropes were taken from her and secured to a group, of pandanus trees on the island. Most of the fishermen, however, were not much worried about their boats, for the harbor was on the sheltered side of the island. The forest would break the full force of the gale.
The day was hot and oppressive, without a breath of wind. It scarcely needed the picture on the television screen and the steady flow of weather reports from the east, to know that Nature was planning one of her big productions. Moreover, though the sky was clear and cloudless, the storm had sent its messages ahead of it. All day long, tremendous waves had been battering against the outer reef, until the whole island shook beneath their impact.
When darkness fell, the sky was still clear and the stars seemed abnormally brilliant.
Johnny was standing outside the Naurus' concrete-and-alurninium bungalow, taking a last look at the sky before turning in, when he became aware of a new sound above the thunder of the waves. It was a sound such as he had never heard before, as of a monstrous animal moaning in pain, and even on that hot, sultry evening, it seemed to chill his blood.
And then he saw something to the east that broke his nerve completely. An unbroken wall of utter blackness was riding up the sky, climbing visibly even as he watched. He had heard and seen the onset of the hurricane, and he did not wait for more.
"I was just coming to get you," said Mick, when Johnny closed the door thankfully behind him. Those were the last words that he heard for many hours. Seconds later, the whole house gave a shudder. Then came a noise which, despite its incredible violence, was startlingly familiar. For a moment it took Johnny back to the very beginning of his adventures; he remembered the thunder of the Santa Anna jets, only a few feet beneath him, as he climbed aboard the hovership, half a world away and a seeming lifetime ago.
The roar of the hurricane had already made speech impossible. Yet now, unbelievably, the sound level became even higher, for such a deluge as Johnny had never imagined was descending upon the house. The feeble word "rain" could not begin to describe it.
Judging by the sound that was coming through roof and walls, a man in the open would be drowned by the sheer mass of descending water—if he was not crushed first.
Yet Mick's family was taking all this quite calmly. The younger children were even gathered around the television set, watching the pictures, though they could not hear a word of the sound. Mrs. Nauru was placidly knitting—a rare accomplishment which she had learned in her youth and which normally fascinated Johnny because he had never seen anyone doing it before. But now he was too disturbed to watch the intricate movement of the needles and the magical transformation of wool into sock or sweater.
He tried to guess, from the uproar around him, what was happening outside. Surely, trees were being torn up by their roots; boats and eve'n houses scattered by the gale! But the howl of the wind and the deafening, unending crash of water masked all other sounds.
Guns might be booming outside the door, and no one would ever hear them.
Johnny looked at Mick for reassurance; he wanted some sign that everything was all right, that it would soon be over and everything would be normal. But Mick shrugged his shoulders, then made a pantomime of putting on a face mask and breathing from an Aqualung mouthpiece,