J. Allan Dunn

“ There's no time to fuss with the engine.”
Leila nodded and seized an oar, keeping time to Chalmers's stroke. Well out in the lagoon, rowing furiously back to their own beach, the boat shuddered the length of its keel as if it had struck a shoal, yet kept its momentum. The roar came once more from the interior. The side of a hill wavered, the dense forest glided downward and vanished in a valley, leaving a scar of brown earth where once it had waved in tropical luxuriance. A blind breaker lifted them shoreward, while they tugged to bring the boat bow on, and rolled high up the beach. ”

“ Leila gasped in terror.
“Come on!” cried Chalmers. “We've got to get out of this!”
He caught her hand, and started to run toward the water when a second shock threw them on their faces. It lasted longer than the first, with a recurrence of the grinding thunder in the hills.
He got to his knees. The seas were mounting beyond the reef, high crestless waves of oily brown that rolled across the coral barrier and sent the lagoon water surging far up the sand. ”

“ As Chalmers called, a wave advanced far beyond its predecessors, clutched at, the boat and threatened to set it adrift. He jumped to steady it and Leila was already clambering up the headland before he had it under control. A minute more and she was down again, climbing with the grace and freedom of a young chamois.
“Here it is,” she said breathlessly, “and the glasses.”
They rowed hard for the reef-opening across the troubled lagoon, indistinguishable now from the outside sea save where the great waves suddenly reared themselves as they reached the wall of the reef. ”