Summer is the time in the West Indies for hurricanes, and at the sudden dropping of the barometer, Captain Eric became instantly anxious. As far as the rest of the party could see, though, there had been no visible change in the weather. The skies were still brightly and vividly blue, and the waves no higher than a long, lazy swell. Even the wind had not freshened. Instead it had dropped to an almost dead calm. Then, little by little, the sky began to cloud over—clouds seeming to leap into sight quite suddenly, where only a short while before there had been nothing but blue. The _Sea Gull_, in spite of her enormous spread of canvas, designed for speed (for the tea clippers were racing ships, each seeking to outdistance all rivals in her hurry to land a cargo first in the market), could make little headway. But presently all on board were conscious that she was rolling noticeably. The swells were higher now, and seemed to increase in size endlessly; they were oily-looking, without crests or foam, and came on in regular undulations, lifting the ship with a queer, sinister effect of upheaval that grew to have more and more of a threat of violence behind it. And then, all in a minute, the wind arrived—a mighty, moving wall of wind that had an impact like a solid substance when it struck the clipper. Accompanying it there came darkness, and a great pandemonium of sound: shriekings and moanings, and strange growling, hissing noises like nothing Erica had ever heard before, or imagined. The crew were in a frenzy of ordered activity on deck, lowering the huge sails and making everything fast. Even Lis had duties, and Erica, finding no one of whom she could ask questions, retired disconsolately to her own little cabin, where she found Milly, pale as a little black-garbed ghost, on her knees before her bunk. “Oh, Ricky,” the girl cried, thankfully, on her entrance, “if someone hadn’t come soon I guess I’d have _died_! Cousin Callie’s looking after Cousin Charity in their cabin, and they have Barbee with them. There wasn’t any room for me, so I—Do you think the ship can possibly stand up against such a wind? It’s—it’s like one of those dreadful things you dream in nightmares. Oooh! Listen to that awful shrieking! It sounds—Ricky, I’m—_scared_.” She whispered the last in a shamed little half-voice, but with obvious sincerity, and Erica, clinging to the door-jamb to keep her feet in the heavy rolling, tried to smile reassuringly. “Trust father, Milly. He’s been in some pretty bad storms, and the _Sea Gull_ and he have always come through safely,” she said, bravely. “Probably it seems worse to us because it’s our first experience with a hurricane.” “Oh—is it _that_?” Poor Milly wailed, sliding across the small cabin with the next lurch of the ship, and clutching desperately at Erica’s outstretched hand just in time to save herself from a head-on collision with Sun Li’s teakwood chest.