Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [110]
Then came a lull, the eye, and they looked at each other.
‘Too risky to make it to town. We have to see it out here,’ said Tyndall.
All too soon, the eye of the cyclone had passed and the terror began all over again. Olivia lost track of time, reduced to an emotional numbness, unable to think or feel, aware only of the warmth and strength of Tyndall’s body. Tyndall was thinking of the little luggers at sea. Few would survive. Thanks to his lassitude, Ahmed, Yoshi and Taki were still ashore and he prayed they were safe. He could only trust and pray that the crew on the Annabella would be lucky.
By nightfall the winds gradually eased and then stopped. The sounds of the town picking itself up and awakening from the nightmare began to echo through the devastation. In the darkness, Tyndall and Olivia held hands as they picked their way through rubble and mud to Olivia’s house, oblivious to what was around them. But in her street they became aware of voices calling and the crunch of wood and tin being moved by residents assessing the damage. The evening sky was still overcast but in the dimness Olivia could see her front fence was gone, the tree in the front garden uprooted and, to her horror, one end of the house had slid from its pole foundations and half the roof was gone. She realised at once which part of the house had caved in.
‘It’s the bedrooms. Oh, dear God, no … ’ she clawed her way into the house, tripping and stumbling, calling, ‘Hamish, Hamish, I’m here … ’
Tyndall scrambled past her, calling for Minnie in the darkened house. He wheeled about and shouted at Olivia to be quiet and listen.
Then they heard it. ‘Mummy … ’ followed by Minnie’s strong voice, ‘In main bedroom.’
As Tyndall and Olivia groped their way into the room now exposed to sky, a light suddenly flared. It flickered from the floor and there, from under the big, solid wood four-poster bed, two faces peeped out, illuminated by the candle in Minnie’s hand. Tyndall took the candle and helped Minnie out while Olivia scooped up Hamish.
‘Big bed no can move. Good place, eh?’ grinned Minnie, then seeing what had crashed into the house in the night she murmured, ‘Cripes, no wonder lotsa noise.’ She reached into her apron pocket and handed another candle and the matches to Tyndall. ‘All I had time to grab.’
Minnie found cake and made a pot of tea and they settled down in the undamaged section of the house to sleep till dawn.
At first light, Tyndall crept outside. He wondered how Minnie’s husband had fared in their small cottage near Kennedy’s Knoll.
The impact of the cyclone, even though the town missed the full force of it, was shocking. He headed straight for the bay and saw that a dozen luggers making for Roebuck Bay had reached Entrance Point before being wrecked on the rocks or driven into the tangle of mangroves.
The waters of the bay were stained with flood-waters and along the coastline for miles was a hightide mark of flotsam. A jumble of sea rubbish, broken mangroves, wrecked dinghies and shattered boats were tangled with stores and dead birds. Seamen’s personal effects and bodies of men were thrown together in a litter of wreckage and death.
Tales of heroism, survival and tragedy would later emerge: the elderly white captain supported in the sea by his Malay crew until they were luckily swept into shore; shipwrecked men who had the clothes whipped from their bodies and suffered near blindness and excruciating pain as their naked bodies were sandblasted by the wind-driven sand; a shell opener decapitated by a flying sheet of iron; and so many other lives lost by drowning.
As Tyndall trudged through the town it looked as if a small war had been fought in the streets. Shanty houses had been torn apart and blown miles into the pindan, foundations remaining as the only evidence of their previous existence. Some commercial buildings in town were flattened and most were damaged. Sheba Lane took a battering but while many lost their roofs and rickety balconies, most of the buildings stayed upright,