Hurricane Season

She’s Nostalgic Because it’s the:-

By Dorothy A. Weaver.

ALL week I felt something lacking, something within myself which I could not analyse or qualify.

Suddenly, incredibly it struck me: I was homesick for hurricanes.

Ever since childhood the season between November and April had brought a particularly excited an ticipation; a tense nervous watch fulness in an atmosphere prickly with uneasiness. The fever ran through the earth, the trees and the water and communicated itself to everyone everywhere.

Straggled along the edge of the lagoon the town knew it and felt it as it sweated and waited in the heavy sultriness of tropic summer for something to happen, never quite certain what. Across the blueness of the bay, the sinister ranges frowned blackly and the thick tangled bush tumbled in green, steamy confusion to the water’s edge, silent and uneasy. Smash ing in unceasing thunder against the coral bar not a mile from shore, a sullen frothing surf protested to the unanswering hills.

In the town itself people watched and waited —brown, white and yellow man like. They watched the sea far out for the grey ugly warn ing; watched the clouds massed in huge bruises against the sun; watched the skies for the first flight of hurricane birds; watched the indicator hand of the barometer drop almost imperceptibly to 29, 28; watched the signal flags on the

mast of the meterological office; and waited for the menacing calm, the prelude to the Wagnerian per formance of the storm.

At night they could not watch, but as they sweltered in their beds they listened for a higher note in the surf’s lament, for an unfamiliar whisper of wind in the palm leaves, for the persistent uncanny tap-tap tapping of a loose window latch.

All these gave warning of fury to follow.

Protective shutters for windows came out of storage and a survey was made of the house. A loose weatherboard or a rusted nail in the corrugated iron roof plates might mean a roofless dwelling and a rain-ruined home. Hurricane lanterns were checked, the wicks cleaned and the glasses polished.

Trees near the house were trimmed to ensure that they fell away from the building should they succumb to the wind’s ferocity. All this, I remember, as an adventure recurring each year.

Weather reports from other islands brought by crews of trading cutters formed the news of the day and the native fisherwomen spoke of piles of seaweed in the fish fences and along the beaches. The hot unhealthy breath of the day’s last breeze reeked of dead shellfish and dank seaweed. Down at the wharves all was activity as small boats migrated to sheltered coves and the cargo ships moved from the jetties to drop anchor in deep water.

The stage was set for the elements of air and earth to enact the pre lude. Heat shimmered in the suffocating atmosphere. Blue-black battalions of cloud increased and advanced. High on the ridges a tree stood out starkly—a woodcut bv God. J The lagoon turned grey and glassy while a yellowish haze festered on the seaward horizon.

Hammers met wood in sharp staccato as shutters went into place.

Hundreds of feet above the earth three dots of ebony flight circled and glided. Men glanced upwards and went on hammering, sequins of sweat glistening on the bare burnt skin of their shoulders. No sound th’ stirred the growing A TREE stirred; then became still.

Stirred again, frenziedly. Again it grew still. Silence, over whelming and ominous silence and S; moist stillness pressed down on the senses like a hot clammy hand.

Crrrrack! Thunder vomited sound

(Continued on Page 82)

from behind the hills and lightning, with vicious slash ripped the heavens open. A bombardment of thunder and lightning rocked around the sky and a scream of wind shrilled far off, but moved closer and grew louder minute by minute.

People scurried for shelter and almost before the last bolt was shot into place, the trees and shrubs and green growing things went mad.

Whipped into tortured tarentella, they bent and touched the earth, in their agony as the hurricane