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During the morning of the third day of the digging hopes were falling low. The cairns of stones along the edge of the ground already dug stood there as memorials of one disappointment after another. The clink of iron pick on buried stone had long ceased to bring everybody on the run expecting to see the treasure brought to light. Everybody had by now too often seen a lump of black stone tenderly dug out of the ground by hands that were nervous with fear lest they should damage something valuable.

At middle-day dinner, John had been all but ready to give up. Even Captain Flint had begun to feel that perhaps, after all, there was nothing to be found. But a change of another kind had come over the feelings of the mates. Susan, by now, was settling down at Duckhaven, and, for the moment, wanted no more house-moving. The discovery of Nancy’s spring had made the camp much easier to run than she had thought it would be. Captain Flint had said it was good drinking water, and this, after all that time in the schooner, carefully rationing the water, made Susan want to stay where she was. Peggy agreed with Susan. The two housekeepers had made up their minds to camp at Duckhaven till the food ran out. That, in itself, was enough to put heart into the doubters. Just before dinner, Roger had been asking Titty whether it wasn’t nearly time to start back to the schooner, and John had been thinking that it would be good to be at sea once more, but when they saw that Susan took it for granted that they would be digging on for at least another four days, John somehow forgot his doubts, and Roger said: “Of course, we could stay a whole year if we ate some of the crabs.” Captain Flint, naturally, was ashamed to give up while everybody else seemed ready to dig on, and after dinner all the diggers set to work again, almost as keenly as if this was the first day. They worked steadily on through the afternoon in the shade of the outer trees until something happened that, for a time, brought digging to an end.

“What’s the matter with Gibber?” said Roger suddenly, and Nancy, who was digging close by, looked up to see the monkey shivering as if he had had a sudden fright.

“What’s gone with you, Gibber?” said Nancy. Only a few minutes before she had seen him busily scratching away with a bit of stick, pretending he was digging, like his master.

The monkey whimpered. Its lips drew back from its chattering teeth. It clung to Roger and tried to hide its head in Roger’s shirt. It shivered so violently that Roger himself shook.

“Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim!” called Nancy. “Gibber’s going to have a fever.”

“Not he,” said Captain Flint, who had thrown down his pick and come on the run at hearing Nancy’s call. He took the wrist of the monkey as if he were a doctor feeling a patient’s pulse. “He’s had a fright. That’s what it is. Seen a snake, perhaps. What was he doing?”

“He was helping me to dig,” said Roger. “But there weren’t any snakes. I didn’t see any. And we’d been digging in that hole for a long time.”

“He’s frightened about something or other,” said Captain Flint.

And just then there was a strange loud noise, so loud that everybody heard it in spite of the steady roar of the surf along the beach on either side of sheltered Duckhaven.

Everybody had heard the screaming of parrots and chatterers before. There was nothing strange in that. But this time it was as if all the birds on the island, from every part of the forest, all at once rose screaming above the trees. There was a shrill, ear-splitting din. It seemed to last for about three minutes on end. Then it stopped dead, in an absolute silence, except for the noise of the surf, and the sighing of the wind in the tops of the trees.

“What on earth made them do that all at once?” said Nancy.

“They’re frightened, too,” said Captain Flint. He looked out to sea almost in the way he used to look whenever anything reminded him of Black Jake.

A moment later everybody was startled by a sudden breath of cold wind. It was gone again in a couple of minutes, but during that short time, all the explorers, hot as they were with their digging, shivered like the monkey. Then once more came the warm trade wind, but it died suddenly away as if it were late evening instead of afternoon, and again they shivered in the cold breath that on this hot beach seemed icy.

“Something’s wrong with the weather,” said Captain Flint, and ran down the beach to Duckhaven, where he had hung his coat over the end of the long ridge-pole of the tent, out of the way of the crabs.

He came slowly back, looking first north, then south, then north again, then over his shoulder out to sea, and glancing down every other second at the pocket barometer that he had gone to fetch.

“Dropping like a stone,” he said. “It’s gone down nearly an inch. No wonder the monkey was upset. He knew. And so did the birds.”

“What? What?”

“There’s something pretty bad coming. Dash it all, I wish I knew what to do.”

“What about?” said Nancy.

“The ship,” said Captain Flint.

“We’ve got her well pulled up,” said Titty.

“Swallow’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “But if we get the Wild Cat smashed up we shall be in a pretty fair mess.”

“She’s in a jolly good anchorage,” said John.

“In good weather,” said Captain Flint. “She’s all right there with the trade wind blowing all day and dropping every night. Couldn’t be better. She’s sheltered by the island. But those cold breaths mean a shifting wind, and more than that, too. What if there comes a buster, swinging all round the compass? What if we get a circular storm? We’re in the tropics, mind you.” He was talking as much to himself as to the other diggers. “What if it blows up from the south-west or north-west? Wild Cat’ll be on a lee shore and with the sea that’ll come in there no anchors on earth’ll hold her. I wish to goodness I’d had the sense to look at the glass before.”

“What do you do when it comes on like that?” asked John.

“Get an offing first of all. Get away from the land and heave to, maybe, when you’ve got the sea room, and come back again when things quieten down.”

“Won’t Mr. Duck do it?” said Nancy.

“I don’t know that he will,” said Captain Flint. “And if it comes a proper snorter he’ll need more than Bill to help him.”

“Do you think it is coming a snorter?” said Roger.

“Sure of it,” said Captain Flint. “You can’t have a surer sign than those cold breaths. And then the barometer, too. Sure of it. Gibber knew it, too.”

“He’s all right again, now,” said Roger.

“I’d never forgive myself,” said Captain Flint, “if the Wild Cat got smashed up and we were marooned here for good.”

“To wait for Black Jake to take us off,” said Titty.

Again Captain Flint glanced out to sea and round the horizon.

“Look there,” he said, and everybody looked away to the south in the direction he was pointing.

It was not a vessel he had seen, but something that meant very little to his crew. Far away to the south, low over the sea, was a long line of bright, copper-coloured cloud.

“And the wind’s northerly,” said Captain Flint. “That cloud’s coming up from the south. Against the wind. There’s no time to lose. The trouble’s coming at once, whatever it is. Never mind about the digging. How long will it take you to pack?”

“In Swallow?” asked Susan.

“We can’t put out in Swallow till the wind drops,” said Captain Flint, “and by that time it’ll be too late. We’ll have to leave everything we can’t carry.”

The cloud in the south was visibly rising. It was the colour of a bright copper kettle. As it rose, it ceased to be a mere line of cloud. Its base narrowed while its top widened. It was as hard-edged as a thunder-cloud, but no one ever saw a thunder-cloud of such a colour.

“We can’t leave everything,” said Susan. “Half the things are things we can’t do without. And if we’ve got to hurry it’s no good thinking Roger and Titty can go as fast as John and Nancy.”

“What about our sleeping-bags?” said Peggy. “We’ll want them when we get back to the Wild Cat.”

“What about Swallow?” said Titty.

Captain Flint looked this way and that, away up to the north, where those strange cold breaths had come from, and away south to this great, hard-edged copper-coloured fan that was spreading up over the blue sky as if it were cut out of sheet metal.

“The thing’s coming at once,” he said. “There isn’t a moment to lose. There may be only just time to get across.”

“Don’t waste any of it saying good-bye,” said Nancy, firmly taking command. “What’s the good of talking about it? You’ve got to go. How are we ever going to get home if anything happens to the schooner? Go on. We’re all right here. Nothing can possibly go wrong with us. Duckhaven’s right as rain. We’ve got food. We’ve got water. We’re on land.”

“If I could only be sure that Mr. Duck would take her out to sea,” said Captain Flint.

“But he won’t,” said John. “He’ll be waiting for you to come because you said you’d slip across if the weather looked like turning nasty.”

“He won’t go at all,” said Titty. “He’ll be remembering what he felt like when he was wrecked here and couldn’t get away.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Captain Flint, bothered beyond anything by the thought of the coming storm, and fear for the schooner that was, after all, their only means of getting home. “Look here, Nancy, you’ve got a lot of sense if you care to use it. So has John. I can trust you both. Susan has more than enough to spare for the rest of you.”

“When you come back,” said Susan, “please don’t forget to bring some more matches. We’ve got plenty for a couple of days, but we’ll want more after that.”

“And some more chocolate,” said Roger.

There was a breath of hot air from the south, air as hot as if it had been puffed out of a furnace door, as hot as those earlier breaths out of the north had been cold.

Captain Flint hurriedly emptied out his pockets. There were three boxes of matches, all half-empty, in the pockets of his coat. There were two almost full boxes in one of his trouser-pockets, and another, empty but for one match, in the other.

“I might have guessed it,” said Susan, laughing. “I almost did.” She gave him the empty box, putting half a dozen matches into it. “That’ll last you till you get across. But do hurry up.”

“We’ll be perfectly all right,” said Nancy.

“Give my love to Peter Duck,” said Roger. “And Gibber’s too.”

“All our loves,” said Titty. “And to Polly.”

“And to Bill, of course,” said Nancy.

“Just remember one thing,” said Captain Flint, looking hard at that copper cloud that was now covering nearly a quarter of the sky. “If it really comes on to blow, and we may have a hurricane before night, keep out of the trees. The less shelter of that sort the better. Trees are all right, but you don’t want them blowing down about your heads. Stick it out in the open and you’ll perhaps be better here than aboard ship. Anyway it looks to me as if the wind’s going to swing round to the south-west. You’ll be all right here, but the sooner I get the Wild Cat clear of the land the better for us all.”

“Don’t go on hanging about, Uncle Jim,” said Nancy. “You can’t be in two places at once. We’ve said good-bye to you.”

“Swallows and Amazons for ever!” cried Captain Flint, flung his coat over his shoulder instead of putting it on, and hurried off into the forest.

“Swallows and Amazons for ever! Good-bye! Good luck!”

The others shouted after him, but he was already disappearing among the trees and though at that moment there was another of those strange hot breaths from the south, and a lull in the trade wind from the Atlantic, the surf was so loud on the beach that he probably did not hear them.

“Do you think it’s going to be a really bad one?” said Susan.

“Giminy, how do I know?” said Nancy. “Anyway, it isn’t our first hurricane. Remember being hove-to in the Bay. And just remember the hurricane we had our last night on Wild Cat Island.”

“I wish he hadn’t gone,” said Peggy. “It feels almost thundery.”

“Thundery!” said Captain Nancy. “What if it is? Do try to remember you’re an Amazon. I don’t know why it is my mate’s no blessed good at thunder. But she’d be quite all right if it was guns,” she added.

“Do you think he’ll have time to get out of the trees before it comes?” said Titty.

“What’s become of all the crabs?” asked Roger suddenly.

They looked about them. There was not a crab to be seen, even by the fireplace on the beach, where, usually, it was almost impossible to move without stepping on one.

“They’re afraid, too, like Gibber and the parrots,” said Titty.

“It must be going to be pretty bad,” said Peggy.

“All the more fun to remember it afterwards,” said Nancy.