Part 17 (1/2)

”It certainly does rain,” agreed Jack. ”Five minutes ago there wasn't a drop in the street, and now you could float your motor boat there, if you had it, Cora.”

”And we may wish we had it, before we're through,” chimed in the voice of Walter. They had made of Cora's room, which was the largest of the suite, a sort of gathering place.

”Why so, Wally?” demanded Jack.

”It looks as though we'd be flooded,” was his answer.

”Oh, these storms are common down here” put in Bess. ”I spoke to Inez about it, and she said the natives here were used to them.”

”Such storms as this?” asked Cora, as a fiercer dash of rain, and a sudden blast of wind, seemed about to tear away the windows and let the fury of the elements into the room.

”Well, I suppose that's what she meant,” said Bess. ”But it is awful, isn't it? And mamma and papa, and your mother, Cora, out on that steamer.”

”Oh, they'll be all right,” declared Jack. ”It's a big steamer, and the captain and crew must be used to the weather down here. They'll know what to do. Probably they ran for harbor when they saw the storm coining. They say skippers in the West Indies can tell when a storm's due hours ahead.”

But that brought little comfort to the girls, and even Walter looked worried as the day wore on and the fury of the storm did not abate.

Inez, as one who had lived in the region, was appealed to rather often to say whether this was not the worst she had ever seen.

”Oh, I have seen zem much worse,” was her ready answer, ”but zey did terrible damage. Terrible!”

And, on talking with some of the old residents of San Juan, and with the hotel people, Jack and Walter learned that the storm was a most unusual one.

It was of the nature of a hurricane, but it did not have the sudden sharpness and shortness of attack of those devastating storms. The real hurricane season, due to a change of climatic conditions, was supposed to have pa.s.sed, and this storm was entirely unlooked for, and unexpected.

It did not blow steadily, as hurricanes did, but in fits and gusts, more disconcerting than a steady blow of more power. The rain, also, came in showers. Now there would not be a drop filling, and again there would be a deluge, blinding in its intensity.

For want of a better name the storm was called a hurricane, though many of the real characteristics were lacking. And, as the dreary day wore on, the motor girls, and the boys, too, felt themselves coming under the spell of fear--not so much for themselves, as for their loved ones aboard the Ramona, which was the name of the steamer on, which Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Kimball had sailed.

”Oh, if anything has happened to them!” sighed Cora.

”Can't we get some news?” asked Bess, faintly.

”Surely there are telegraph lines and cables,” spoke Belle.

”There are,” the hotel clerk informed them, ”but there are so many small islands hereabouts, into the harbor of any one of which the s.h.i.+p may have put, that it would be impossible to say where it was.

And not all the islands have means of communication. So I beg of you not to worry, Senoritas. Surely they are safe.”

Yet even the clerk, sophisticated as he was, did not believe all he himself said. For the storm, as the girls learned afterward, was almost unprecedented in the West Indies.

There was nothing they could do save to wait until it was over--until it had blown itself out, and then to wait, perhaps longer and with an ever increasing anxiety, for some news of those who had sailed.

”Oh, if Senor Robinson should be lost!” half sobbed Inez, on the third day of the storm, when it showed no signs of abating. ”If he should be lost, my father would be doomed forever to zat prison.”

”Nonsense!” exclaimed Jack, for it was in talking to Jack and Walter that the Spanish girl gave utterance to these sentiments. ”Don't go saying such things around Cora and Bess and Belle, or you'll give them the fidgets. There's no sign the steamer is lost just because it has run into a storm.”

”I know, Senor Jack,”--for so she called him, ”but zere is so much danger. And my father--he is languis.h.i.+ng in prison.”

”Yes, but we'll have him out. Mr. Robinson didn't take those papers with him; did he--those papers that contain the evidence?”