It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of unconsciousness.

Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in length, among the forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations.

The noise of snapping and falling trunks rang thick on the air.

At times the cyclone would swoop down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and stately palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder.

In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest.