There was no jest in the Old Doctor's tone, as he answered, "I have already ordered that provisions be sent there, and that the servants be prepared to go." This statement brought Stuart up with a jerk. In common with many people, it seemed impossible to him that he would pass through one of the great convulsions of nature. Human optimism always expects to escape a danger. "But this is the beginning of October!" the boy protested. "I always thought hurricanes came in the summer months." "No; August, September and October are the three worst months. That is natural, for a hurricane could not happen in the winter and even the early summer ones are not especially dangerous. But the signs of this one are troubling. Look!" He pointed to the sea. The rolling swell was losing its character. The water, usually either a turquoise-blue or a jade-green, was now an opaque olive-black. The waves were choppy, and threw up small heads of foam like the swirl of cross-currents in a tide-rip. Stuart began to feel a little frightened. "Do you really think it will come here?" "Yes," said the botanist gravely, "I do. In fact I am sure of it. Barbados is full in the hurricane track, you know." "But why?" queried the boy. "I've always heard of West Indian hurricanes. Do they only happen here? I don't see why they should come here more than any other place." "Do you know why they come at all?" Stuart thought for a moment. "No," he answered, "I don't know that I do. I never thought anything about it. I always figured that storms just happened, somehow." "Nothing 'just happens,'" was the stern rebuke. "Hark!" He held up his finger for silence. A low rumbling, sounding something like the pounding of heavy surf on a beach heard at a distance, and closely akin to the sound made by Niagara Falls, seemed to fill the air. And, across the sound, came cracks like distant pistol shots heard on a clear day. The white arch rose slowly and just underneath it appeared an arch of darker cloud, almost black. At the same moment, came a puff of the cool wind from the north. "We will have it in less than two hours," said the scientist. "It is a good thing that all afternoon I have had the men and women on the place nailing the shutters tight and fastening everything that can be fastened. We may only get the edge of the hurricane, we may get the center. There is no telling. An island is not like a ship, which can direct its course so as to escape the terrible vortex of the center. We've got to stay and take it." "But has every hurricane a center?" queried the boy, a little relieved by the thought that the storm would not come for two hours. In that time, he foolishly thought, it might have spent its force. He did not know that hurricanes possess a life of their own which endures not less than a week, and in one or two cases, as long as a month.