Susan bustled Titty into her clothes and got into her own. Roger and John pulled on their knickerbockers. There was the sound of a squabble in the tent of the Amazons.
“Don’t put your head under, Peggy. Get dressed like the others.”
There was a glare of lightning and a crash of thunder all in one, and after that for a long time the thunder and lightning came so close one after the other that no one knew which flash belonged to which clap of thunder. The camp was full of light and the rolling, crashing thunder overhead made things seem hurried, as if there was something that ought to be done but no time in which to do it. The lanterns were lit but, though they were bright in the short moments of darkness, they seemed to give no light at all in the glare of the lightning flashes.
It was dark again and suddenly quiet. It was as if the storm were holding its breath. Then there was a deep, rushing noise, far away, louder and louder every moment.
“What’s that?” said Titty.
“Wind,” said Susan.
“I say,” said Titty, “this is a storm.”
As she said it the wind reached them.
There was a crash as a heavy branch fell somewhere at the low end of the island. There was a swishing noise as the trees swayed in the wind. Nor was the noise all. The tents of the Swallows were hung on ropes between trees and held down by stones in pockets along the bottom edges of the tent walls. The trees were blown this way and that and the rope now slackened, now tightened up again so hard that in the captain’s tent the stones shifted and rattled in the pockets.