nderstanding and consolation from her; promptly he was
afraid of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.

"A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets
started," he reflected. "Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep
the conversation kedge well hooked."

Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing.
Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.

After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The
schooner was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He
glanced up and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the
dingy glass of the windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he
cocked his ear, with mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind
gasping in the open space with a queer "guffle" in its tone.

Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.

Already that day the _Olenia's_ glass had warned him by its downward
tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something
more ominous than fog.

Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a
hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the
advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were
roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered "Tornado."

"You can't tell nothing from that!" Captain Candage had come down into
the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. "It has registered
'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about
as reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things."

"Haven't you a regular barometer--an aneroid?" inquired Captain Mayo.

"I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of
them contrivances," declared the master of the schooner, in lordly
manner. He began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.

Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were both
weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog was
gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white
crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with
ominous signalings.

"If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you
that this promises to be something pretty nasty."

"Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but
I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an
inshore puddle every time the wind whickers