Children of the Storm

it's the only one that's formed up near Distingue, so far.”
        “You mean we're in its path?”
        “Probably not,” he said.
        “You don't know for sure?”
        “Not yet. It's headed directly this way, but it's a hundred and twenty miles out, and it'll probably veer considerably before it reaches us. We won't get the hurricane itself, just the unpleasant fringe effects-lots of wind and rain. How bad that gets depends on how soon Greta veers. The closer she gets before making a directional switch, the worse we'll get pounded.”
        “Should we go to Guadeloupe, to a larger island?” she asked.
        “Maybe. But we can't. The boats are useless, remember.”
        She said nothing. She could not think of anything to say.
        Saine let the drapes fall back into place, and he turned away from the window. Quietly, so that the children wouldn't hear him, he said, “Has a good night's sleep refreshed your memory any?”
        “How so?”
        “Have you recalled anything more about the man who tried to kill you in the garden?”
        “No,” she said.
        He sighed. “These next couple of days are going to seem like a whole lifetime.”
        “Or even longer,” she agreed.

----

    FIFTEEN
        
        Sonya decided to carry on in their normal routine, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened or was about to happen-as if the sabotaged radio-telephones, the ruined boats, and the approaching storm were all parts of some monstrous fantasy that was, admittedly, unsettling but, nonetheless, only fantasy. She tutored Alex and Tina until two o'clock, with Rudolph Saine sitting by them like an overgrown child who'd wandered into the wrong classroom. They ate a light lunch at two, and Sonya asked the children what they'd like to do, for recreation.
        “Can we go to the beach?” Alex asked.
        “It's not the weather for swimming,” Sonya said.
        “Not to swim, just to watch,” the boy said.
        “Watch what?”
        “The waves. When the weather's bad, we get these monstro waves that're really keen.”
        “Isn't there an indoor game you'd like to play?” Sonya asked.
        “I want to see the monstro waves,” Tina said.
        Sonya looked to Saine for help.
        The big man rose. “If it's monstro waves they want to see, it's monstro waves we give them.”
        “Get your jackets,” Sonya told them.
        They stepped across the hall, with Saine watching, and got their windbreakers from the closet, were back in a moment.
        “Stay close,” Sonya warned.
        Alex took hold of his sister's hand, and the little girl did not object, as she normally might have. She stood close beside him, casting glances his way, as if he were capable of protecting her and were not merely a fragile, nine-year-old boy.
        This gesture did not escape Sonya's attention, and she wondered whether, despite their apparent good humor and playfulness, the children didn't understand the gravity of the situation more than they let on to the adults around them. Or perhaps, rather than a conscious understanding, their caution was on a primitive, physical level, an unconscious reaction to a broad spectrum of pressures that they did not even realize they sensed.
        Outside, a good breeze was blowing from the southeast, pushing northwestward, less forceful at ground level than it was up where the big clouds were herded along. It set up a soft, rustling sound in the palm forest, a sinister hissing, but was otherwise innocuous. It was somewhat difficult to imagine it growing in force until it could uproot palms and drive waves halfway across the island.
        They went across the edge of the formal gardens, almost directly over the spot where Sonya had lain, unconscious, the night before, took a set of steps down to the gray beach.
        “See!” Alex cried, pointing to the unruly waters.
        Just as he had said, the waves were huge, eight or nine feet high, curling in toward the beach with brutal force. That elemental savagery was as hypnotic a show as the boy had promised.
        “There's a ship!” Alex cried.
        “Where?” Tina asked.
        He pointed.
        Sonya followed the direction of his outflung hand and saw, far out on that boiling cauldron of a sea, the dark shape of a long tanker which wallowed up and down like some living creature unaccustomed to savage waters and searching for a way out. Even