“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,” said Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”
They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on vacancy. The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of gray crystal, opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the guards it rebounded with the force of the downfall in white foam more than a foot high, while sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and volume of a cataract. But for the list of the boat, for the _Cherokee Rose_ had not grounded fair and square on the sand-bar, this flood would have been surging through the saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts and, the windward side being several inches lower than the other, the downpour struck upon it and recoiled from the slant. The sound was something tremendous; the savagery of the roar of the columns of rain falling upon the roof was portentous, sinister, expressive of the unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and of the helplessness of human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the turmoil had in some sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently apparent, a new clamor was in the air,--a metallic clanking, repetitious, constantly loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a deep, long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously, an effort was in progress to get the _Cherokee Rose_ off the bar under her own steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the extreme pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of the turmoil without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to raise the river sufficiently to justify the attempt.
“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented one of the passengers.
Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or, perhaps, unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door opened in his hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length of the saloon over the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind promptly knocked him off his feet, throwing him across the cabin against a huddle of overturned chairs. The other men, with one accord, sprang forward, and it was only with the united strength of half a dozen that the door could be forced to close, although its lock seemed scarcely able to hold it against the pressure from without. For the wind had redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the hurricane, and there was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.