— the day of the storm, when the thunder went and came all day, moving in a great circle round the shore of the bay, crossing darkly over Kingston and Plymouth, from behind the Standish Monument, but never getting as far as South Duxbury, and then moving out to sea over the black hills at Manomet, the lightning stabbing down vividly from the belly of black cloud into the mass of white rain that hung over Plymouth and the sea, the thunder almost continuous. Before lunch, the wind rose to a steady scream, but on Powder Point the sun still shone brightly, and we tried to have archery practice. The wind blew the arrows every which way, blew our words back into our mouths, and Porper was always being flung down on the grass, and saying that he couldn’t breathe.
— Porper, you silly, stand here behind the corner of the porch, it’s nice and quiet here, you can watch the lightning just as well from here.
— What lightning.
— You see, the lightning over there, over Plymouth. And just listen to the thunder it sounds like lions.
— Where are the lions.
— At the zoo, don’t you remember?
— I want to see the lions.
Uncle David went in and got the box kite with the two enormous reels of twine, and Uncle Tom said we ought not to try it, the wind was too strong, and it might break away, but Uncle David laughed and said no, it was all right, he would hang on to it, and hitch it to the cart and give Porper a ride across the tennis court, or even down to the end of the Point. The wind almost blew it out of his hands when he took it out to the tennis court, and then he lifted it up over his head, staggering, and let go of it, while Uncle Tom ran past the porch with the cord, and the red kite gave a swoop to one side and then began to go up so fast that Uncle Tom just let the cord whizz through his glove, while the reel danced up and down on the ground at his feet.
— Andy. Susan. Go and get the cart. Where is the cart.
I pulled the cart from under the porch, but as soon as we tied the cord to the handle and tried to let it go the kite dragged it over on its side and yanked it in leaps and bounds over the tennis court, so that we had to sit on it and stop it. Uncle Tom and Uncle David both had hold of the cord, but it kept on pulling them step by step towards the Walker house, while Mother untied the cart again. It was hard to hear what people were saying in the wind.
— We’ll never be able to get it down.
— Of course we can.
— Everybody take hold, come on Doris, and you, Andy, and we’ll see if we can pull it back and make it fast to the porch.
We all pulled, but we couldn’t budge it. We stood there, holding it and watching it. It was high up, and seemed almost halfway to the end of the Point.
— Can we send up some messengers, Uncle Tom.
— No, I don’t think we’d better — we’ve got our hands full as it is—
— Susan could cut them out.
— We might manage to make it fast to the Walkers’ barn—
Susan was just running in to cut out the paper messengers, the little rings of paper to send up the cord, when suddenly there was a twang, the cord had snapped, and we all took a step backward, so that Uncle Tom almost had to sit down.
— It’s gone. As I thought.
We stood there, all of us, in the wind, and watched it go. It got smaller and smaller and in a few minutes we couldn’t see it at all. It was going straight out towards Provincetown, across Massachusetts Bay.
In the afternoon the wind dropped almost as suddenly as it had begun, but the clouds were gathering again behind the Standish Monument, getting blacker and blacker. Everything became silent. The trees and bushes were as still as if they were listening. We played bean bag in the sitting room with Porper, until Porper got silly and wanted to throw the pine-needle cushion at the board instead of the bean bag, so then we played the battleship card game, but Porper always wanted to have the Amphitrite and the Vesuvius, so he and Susan played croquinole, while I went down to the playhouse to study Latin. When I went out, Mother and Uncle David were standing on the porch, looking across the bay with the telescope.
— Are you going to the playhouse, Andy?
— Yes.
— Ten to one you’ll get wet on the way back.
— I don’t care.
In the playhouse it was almost too dark to read, so I left the door open; and I could watch the lightning behind the monument, and see the oak leaves beginning to stir again in an icy-cold draught of air that seemed to come very low over the ground. This was going to be a humdinger, and no mistake. What Aunt Norah always called a shingle-ripper, because it sounded as if the shingles were being ripped off the roof when the lightning and thunder came so close. Utor, fruor, fungor, potior, and vescor. The ablative absolute. Who wanted to know about ablatives. And what silly names they had for them, anyway. I went through the fourth declension three times, reciting it’ aloud while I bounced a cracked Ping-pong ball against the partition of the bicycle shed. That. And that. And that. And that. And then suddenly the wind came, and whirled half the pages in the book, and the window screen whistled, and when I went to the door I saw that the water in front of the Standish Hotel had gone completely white. I was afraid, but excited. Perhaps I’d better go back to the house, and be with the others. Before the storm actually got to us across the bay.
I closed the window and door and ran up the slope. By the time I got to the house the wind was so strong that it almost took me off my feet. I saw Uncle Tom standing at the base of the windmill, looking first upward at the top of it, with his eyes shaded by his hand, and then down at the foot. When I joined him he pointed to the leg of the windmill nearest to the house and then put his mouth close to my cheek and shouted.
— I’m afraid it will go over. We’ll have to lash it. Do you think you could climb — I’ll get the clothes line.
He went into the kitchen, while I stood and watched the windmill. The slender steel leg was heaving out of the ground and then settling again, four inches at a time. The mill was shut off, but spinning just the same, and pumping slowly; the wind was so irregular that whenever it caught the wheel broadside on, it whirled it and at the same time pushed it so violently that the whole frame of steel seemed to tug out of the ground. The diagonal struts were singing like telephone wires. I stood on the lowest strut and the leg lifted me right up with it.
Uncle Tom came back with the coil of clothes line.
Do you think you could climb up. You’re nimbler than I am. Are you afraid.
— No.
— All right, then, take this, and climb up to the third crosspiece and make it fast to this leg, above and below the crosspiece, and then carry the rope round the next leg, that one and then back again round this one. Do you see what I mean?
I took the coil of rope and climbed up the little galvanized iron steps, one at a time, with my khaki trousers flattened against my legs like boards, hardly able to breathe, and stepped out on the crosspiece. The whole windmill was rocking like the mast of a boat. I lowered myself to straddle the gray crosspiece and dropped the coil over the corner of it and brought it up, twice, and made three square knots, the way Mr. Dearing had showed me, and then slid along to the other leg and looped the rope twice over and under the crosspiece there.
— Now the same thing with the first one again.
I slid back and did it.
— Now drop me the rope. And come down. Before you get blown down.
He yelled this up at me, grinning, and I dropped the coil to him, and he went towards the kitchen porch with it. When I got there he had taken half a dozen turns round a post with it and was knotting it.