Most of them occur in the late summer or early fall. At that season, on the islands in the tropics where the natives in other centuries took life easy, depending on nature’s lavish gifts of fruit and other foods, the tropical storm came as an occasional catastrophe. Trees went down in howling gales, rain came in torrents, flooding the hilly sections, big waves deluged the coasts, and frail native houses were swept away in an uproar of the elements. The survivors thought they had done something to displease one of the mythical beings who ruled the winds and the waters. In the Caribbean region, it was supposed to be the god of the big winds, Hunrakan, from which the name hurricane originated. His evil face seemed to leer from the darkening clouds as the elements raged. In time, Europeans settled in the islands and on the southeastern coasts of America. They dreaded the approach of late summer, when copper-colored clouds of a tropical storm might push slowly upward from the southeastern horizon. What they learned about them came mostly from the natives, who had long memories for such frightening things and reckoned the time of other events from the years of great hurricanes. Strangely enough, although during the more than four hundred years that have passed since then, man has finally mastered thermo-nuclear reactions capable of permanent destruction of whole islands, he still probes for the secret of storm forces of far greater power. It is hard to say who was the first hunter of storms. Columbus and his sailors were constantly on the lookout and actually saw several West Indian hurricanes. Luckily, they didn’t run into one on their first voyage, or the story of the discovery of America would be quite different, for the ships sailed by Columbus were not able to stand up against these big winds of the tropics. They would have been sunk in deep water or cast ashore as worthless wrecks. If Columbus had been lost in one of these monstrous storms—and he didn’t miss it by very much—it might have been many years before another navigator with a stout heart could have induced men to risk their lives in the uncharted winds of the far places in the Atlantic Ocean. Out there toward the end of the world, where increasing gales dragged ships relentlessly in the direction of the setting sun, sailors who ventured too far would drop off the edge of a flat earth and plunge screaming into eternity—so they thought. Only in Columbus’ mind was the earth a sphere.