"She has eaten the storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves! Oh, great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts and gardens!" And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix's hut, with Mali by her side, too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people.
And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.
"What are they doing outside ?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a peculiarly long wail of misery.
And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the island to destroy them." Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the harbor of Samoa.
And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit.

If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.

They have eaten the storm-fruit.

Oh, great king, save us!".