t, it
had not had a moment's peace since Captain Holt reset its register the
day before. All its efforts for continued good weather had failed.
Slowly but surely the baffled and disheartened needle had sagged from
"Fair" to "Change," dropped back to "Storm," and before noon the next
day had about given up the fight and was in full flight for "Cyclones
and Tempests."

Uncle Isaac Polhemus, sitting at the table with one eye on his game of
dominoes (Green was his partner) and the other on the patch of sky
framed by the window, read the look of despair on the honest face of
the aneroid, and rising from his chair, a "double three" in his hand,
stepped to where the weather prophet hung.

"Sompin's comin' Sam," he said solemnly. "The old gal's got a bad
setback. Ain't none of us goin' to git a wink o' sleep to-night, or I
miss my guess. Wonder how the wind is." Here he moved to the door and
peered out. "Nor'-east and puffy, just as I thought. We're goin' to hev
some weather, Sam--ye hear?--some WEATHER!" With this he regained his
chair and joined the double three to the long tail of his successes.
Good weather or bad weather--peace or war--was all the same to Uncle
Isaac. What he wanted was the earliest news from the front.

Captain Holt took a look at the sky, the aneroid and the wind--not the
arrow; old sea-dogs know which way the wind blows without depending on
any such contrivance--the way the clouds drift, the trend of the
white-caps, the set of a distant sail, and on black, almost breathless
nights, by the feel of a wet finger held quickly in the air, the
coolest side determining the wind point.

On this morning the clouds attracted the captain's attention. They hung
low and drifted in long, straggling lines. Close to the horizon they
were ashy pale; being nearest the edge of the brimming sea, they had,
no doubt, seen something the higher and rosier-tinted clouds had
missed; something of the ruin that was going on farther down the round
of the sphere. These clouds the captain studied closely, especially a
prismatic sun-dog that glowed like a bit of rainbow snipped off by
wind-scissors, and one or two dirt spots sailing along by themselves.

During the captain's inspection Archie hove in sight, wiping his hands
with a wad of cotton waste. He and Parks had been swabbing out the
firing gun and putting the polished work of the cart apparatus in order.

"It's going to blow, captain, isn't it?" he called out. Blows were