The boy glanced up at his home-made weather-vane, which had been adjusted so that it was right to the fraction of a degree.
"South-southeast, sir," he said.
"Is it steady or veering?" the weather expert continued. He was anxious that Tom should feel the importance of his wind observations. "What was it this morning?"
"I'll see, sir," said Tom, and hurried into the house for his book on wind observations, which he had kept faithfully, though, in all the five months of the League's work, there had been no opportunity to make use of them.
"It was south—a quarter—east this morning," he answered quite importantly.
"And what is the present velocity?" came the next query.
Tom ran up the short ladder to the dial of his Robinson anemometer or wind-measurer. This consisted of four cup-shaped pieces of metal fastened to four arms at right angles to each other, and set horizontally in a socket. The force of the wind on the open cup-shaped sides was so much stronger than on the convex or rounded sides that the anemometer whirled around quite rapidly.
"Say," said one of the boys as he watched Tom, "I didn't know he had all this down so pat! It's great!"
"Fourteen miles an hour, sir," said Tom, as he ran down the ladder, "by the anemometer dial."
"Well," the Forecaster replied, "fourteen miles an hour is a good enough breeze for kite-flying. How about it, boys? Shall we try a flight to-day?"