Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/203

Rh "For two days the wind blew, and every hour it increased. By the second night it was a fully developed hurricane whose velocity we had no means of measuring. The rain fell tremendously; the lightning was vivid, and almost continuous. The thunder followed the course of the storm; and altogether the noise was so great that we had to shout to one another to be understood. Our house shook like a rickety bird-cage, and many times it seemed to be half lifted from the ground; but it stood through the storm, and was the only one that did so.

"On the following morning the wind had died down to a moderate gale, and we could venture out. The picture that presented itself cannot possibly be described with anything like vividness. Cocoanut and breadfruit trees by the thousand had been thrown down or stripped of their leaves; banana-plants were in the same condition; the grass was levelled, and covered with mud and water, and not a house in the neighborhood remained standing. In the cotton-fields not only were the leaves and bolls stripped from the plants, but in many places the plants had been torn up by the roots and lay in heaps. In Levuka many houses were blown down; vessels were driven ashore, or broken to