guillotines of the falling palms.
I reached the crest of the saddle without realizing it, and I was unprepared for the full unbroken force of the wind in my back. It hurled me forward, the ground fell away from under my feet as I was thrown over the saddle, my knees gave way and the motor and I rolled headlong down the reverse slope. On the way down we caught up with Sherry North, taking her in the back of the legs. She collapsed on top of me and joined the motor and me on our hurried descent.
One moment I was on top and the next Miss. North was seated between my shoulder blades then the motor was on top of both of us.
When we reached the bottom of the steepest pitch and lay together in a battered and weary heap, we were protected by the saddle from the direct fury of the wind so it was possible to hear what Sherry was saying. It was immediately obvious that she bitterly resented what she considered to be an unprovoked assault, and she was loudly casting doubt on my parentage, character and breeding. Even in my own desperate straits her anger was suddenly terribly comical, and I began to laugh. I saw that she was trying to find sufficient strength to hit me so I decided to distract her.
“-Jack and Jill went up the hill They each had a dollar and a quarter-I croaked at her, “-Jill came down with half a crown They didn’t go up for water.”
She stared at me for a moment as though I had started frothing at the mouth, then she started to laugh also, but the laughter had a wild hysterical note to it.
“Oh you swine!” she sobbed with laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks and her sodden sand-caked hair dangling in thick dark snakes about her face.
Angelo thought she was weeping when he reached us and he drew her tenderly to her feet and helped her down the last few hundred yards to the caves, leaving me to hoist the motor once more to my bruised shoulder and follow them.
Our cave was well placed to weather the cyclone winds, probably chosen by the old fishermen with that in mind. I retrieved the canvas fly leaf from where it was wrapped around the hole of a palm tree and used it to screen the entrance, piling stones upon the trailing end to hold it down and we had a dimly lit haven into which we crept like two wounded animals.
I had left my motor with Chubby in his cave. I felt at that moment that if I never saw it again it would be too soon, but I knew Chubby would treat it witth all the loving care of a mother for her sickly infant and that when the cyclone passed on, it would once more be ready for sea.
Once I had rigged the tarpaulin to screen the cave and keep out the wind, Sherry and I could strip and clean ourselves of the salt and sand. We used a basinful of the precious fresh water for this purpose, each of us taking it in turn to stand in the basin and be sponged down by the other.
I was a mass of scratches and bruises from my long battle with the motor, and although my medical kit was still in the boat at the bottom of the bay, I found a large bottle of mercurochrome in my bag. Sherry began a convincing imitation of Florence Nightingale, with the antiseptic and a roll of cotton wool she anointed my wounds, murmuring condolences and sympathetic sounds.
I rather enjoy being fussed over, and I stood there in a semi-hypnotic state lifting an arm or moving a leg as I was bidden. The first hint that I received that Miss. North was not treating my crippling injuries with the true gravity they deserved was when she suddenly emitted a hoot of glee and daubed my most delicate extremity with a scarlet splash of mercurochrome.
“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,” she chortled, and I roused myself to protest bitterly.
“Hey! That stuff doesn’t wash off.”
“Good!” she cried. “I’ll be able to find you now if you ever get lost in a crowd.” I was shocked by such unseemly levity. I gathered about me my dignity and went to find a pair of dry pants.
Sherry reclined on the mattress and watched me scratching in my bag “How long is this going to last?” she asked.
“Five days,” I told her, as I paused to listen to the unabated roar of the wind.
“How do you know?” “It always lasts five days,” I explained, as I stepped into my shorts and hoisted them.
“That’s going to give us a little time to get to know each other.”
We were caged by the cyclone, locked together in the confined few square feet of the cave, and it was a strange experience.
Any venture out into the open forced upon us by nature, or to check how Chubby and Angelo were faring, was fraught with discomfort and danger. Although the trees were stripped of most of their fruit during the first twelve hours and the weaker trees fell during that period also yet there was still the occasional tree that came crashing down, and the loose trash and fronds flew like arrows on the wind with sufficient force to blind a person or inflict other injury.
Chubby and Angelo worked away quietly on the motors, stripping them down and cleaning them of salt water. They had something to keep them busy.
In our cave, once the initial novelty had passed there developed some crisis of will and decision which I did not properly understand, but which I sensed was critical.
I had never pretended to understand Sherry North in any depth, there were too many unanswered questions, too many areas of reserve, barriers of privacy beyond which I was not allowed to pass. She had not to this time made any declamdon of her feelings, there was never any discussion of the future. This was strange, for any other woman I had ever known expected - demanded - declarations of love and passion. I sensed also that this indecision was causing her as much distress as it was me. She was caught up in something against which she struggled, and in the process her emotions were being badly mauled.
However, with Sherry there was nothing spoken of - for I had accepted the tacit agreement and we did not discuss any of our feelings for each other. I found this restricting, for I am a lover with a florid turn of speech. If I have not yet succeeded in talking a bird down out of a tree - it is probably because I have never seriously made the attempt. I could make this adjustment without too much pain, however, it was the lack of a future that chafed at me.
It seemed that Sherry did not look for our relationship to last longer than the setting of the sun, yet I knew that she could not feel this way, for in the moments of warmth that interspersed those of gloom, there could be no doubts.
Once when I started to speak of my plans for when we had mised the treasure - how I would have another boat built to my design, a boat that incorporated all the best features of the beloved Wave Dancer - how I would build a new dwelling at Turtle Bay that would not deserve the title of shack - how I would furnish it and people it - she took no part in the discussion. When I ran out of words, she turned away from me on the mattress and pretended to sleep although I could feel the tension in her body without touching her.
At another time I found her watching me with that hostile, hating look. While an hour later she was in a frenzy of physical passion which was in diametric contrast.
She sorted and mended my clothing from the bag, sitting cross-legged on the mattress and working with neat businesslike stitches. When I thanked her, she became caustic and derisive, and we ended up in a blazing row until she flung herself out of the cave and ran through the raging wind to Chubby’s cave. She did not return until after dark, with Chubby escorting her and holding a lantern to light her way.
Chubby regarded me with an expression that would have melted a lesser man and frostily refused my invitation to drink whisky, which meant that he was either very sick or very disapproving, then he disappeared again into the storm muttering darkly.
By the fourth day my nerves were in a jangling mess, but I had considered the problem of Sherry’s strange behaviour from every angle and I reached my conclusions.
Cooped up with me in that tiny cave she was being forced at last to consider her feelings for me. She was falling in love, probably for the first time in her life, and her fiercely independent spirit was hating the experience. I cannot say in truthfulness that I was enjoying it very much either - or rather I enjoyed the short periods of repentance and loving between each new tantrum - but I looked forward fervently to the moment when she accepted the inevitable and succumbed completely.
I was still awaiting that happy moment when I awoke in the dawn of the fifth day. The island was in a grip of a stillness that was almost numbing after the uproar of the cyclone. I lay and listened to the silence without
