his feet. Fortunately the horse loved him, and, terrified as it was,
permitted him to mount; and then it seemed to Alexander, as they flew up
King Street to the open country, that they were in a fork of the wind,
which tugged and twisted at his neck while it carried them on. He
flattened himself to the horse, but kept his eyes open and saw other
messengers, as dauntless as himself, tearing in various directions to
warn the planters, many of whom had grown callous to the cry of "Wolf."

The horse fled along the magnificent avenue of royal palms which
connected the east and west ends of the Island. They were bending and
creaking horribly, the masses of foliage on the summits cowering away
from the storm, wrapping themselves about in a curiously pitiful manner;
the long blade-like leaves seemed striving each to protect the other.
Through the ever-increasing roar of the storm, above the creaking of the
trees, the pounding of the rain on the earth, and on the young cane,
Alexander heard a continuous piercing note, pitched upon one monotonous
key, like the rattle of a girl's castinets he had heard on St. Thomas.
His brain, indifferent now to the din, was as active as ever, and he
soon made out this particular noise to be the rattle of millions of
seeds in the dry pods of the "shaggy-shaggy," or "giant," a common
Island tree, which had not a leaf at this season, nothing but countless
pods as dry as parchment and filled with seeds as large as peas. Not for
a second did this castinet accompaniment to the stupendous bass of the
storm cease, and Alexander, whose imagination, like every other sense in
him, was quickening preternaturally, could fancy himself surrounded by
the orchestra of hell, the colossal instruments of the infernal regions
performed upon by infuriate Titans. He was not conscious of fear,
although he knew that his life was not worth a second's purchase, but he
felt a wild exhilaration, a magnificent sense of defiance of the most
powerful element that can be turned loose on this planet; his nostrils