Daybreak! But, eastward, no glory of dawn. Black thundrous clouds roll sullenly across a livid sky, riven at moments by pale zigzags of flame. Rain tumbles in cascades. League upon league of white-crested waves chase one another in fury, hissing, roaring as they hurl themselves upon a stubborn shore, only to be broken and thrown back into the seething turmoil. The wind outstrips them, shrieking as it cleaves a way through the massed foliage, in mad haste to reach the mainland and smite the yielding tops of Darien's palms and pines.
'Herbert Strang' was a pseudonym used by George Herbert Ely (1866–1958) and Charles James L'Estrange (1867–1947), co-editors in the Juveniles Department of Oxford University Press from 1907 until 1939, and the authors of adventure stories for boys.