“Maybe; but if so, this also is past my experience of this coast, sir,” replied the man. “But I allow that when I was sailing with Captain Hawke in the West Indies I knew of the waters of the Caribbean Sea being stirred up like this in the dead calm before a hurricane that sent us on our beam ends, and one of our squadron on to the Palisades Reef at Port Royal.”
“Do you fear for a hurricane at this time?” asked Wesley.
“A gale, maybe; but no such hurricane as wrecks the island it swoops down on in the Leewards, sir. Oh, a hurricane in very deed! Our ship's cutter—a thirty-foot boat swung in on the iron davits—and lashed down to iron stanchions on the deck—was whisked adrift as if it had been an autumn leaf. I say it went five hundred fathom through the air and no man saw it fall. I saw a road twenty foot wide shorn through the dense forest for five miles as clean as with a scythe, as you go to Spanish Town—a round dozen of planters' houses and a stone church had once stood on that cutting. They were swept off, and not a stone of any one of them was ever found by mortal after. Oh, a hurricane, indeed! We need expect naught like that, by the mercy of Heaven, gentlemen; though I care not for the look of yon sun.”
They glanced upwards. The sun had the aspect of being seen through a slight haze, which made it seem of a brazen red, large and with its orb all undefined. It looked more like the red fire of a huge lighted brazier than the round sun, and all around it there was the gleam as of moving flames.
“Looks unhealthy—is't not so?” said the officer.
“There is a haze in the air; but the heat is none the less,” said Hartwell.
“I like it not, sirs. This aspect of the sun is part and parcel of some disturbance of nature that we would do well to be prepared for,” said the officer, shaking his head ominously.
“A disturbance of nature? What mean you? Have you been hearing of the fishing-boats that have been hauled up on the stones at the port for the past two days? Have you taken serious account of the foolishness of a man who calls himself a prophet?” asked Hartwell.
The officer laughed.
“Oh, I have heard much talk of the Prophet Pritchard,” he said. “But you surely do not reckon me as one of those poor wretches whom he has scared out of their lives by threatening them with the Day of Judgment to-morrow? Nay, sir; I placed my trust in a statement that begins with soundings, the direction of the wind and its force, the sail that is set, the last cast of the log, the bearings of certain landmarks, and the course that is being steered. My word for it, without such a preface, any statement is open to doubt.”