Breakfast was just over, and Captain Chubb had gone on deck, while the wind was howling furiously as if in a rage to find its playthings, some two or three hundred vessels of different tonnage, safely moored in the shelter of the harbour, and out of its power to toss here and there and pitch so many helpless ruins to be beaten to pieces upon the shore.
Down it kept coming right in amongst them, making them check at their mooring cables and chains, but in vain, for their crews had been too busy, and the only satisfaction that the tempest could obtain, was to hearken to the miserable dreary groans that were here and there emitted as some of the least fortunate and worst secured ground against each other.
“Isn’t it horrible, uncle?” shouted Rodd, for the rain just then was mingled with good-sized hailstones, and was rattling down upon the deck and skylight in a way that half-drowned the lad’s voice.
“Miserable weather, Pickle; but never mind. We must settle down to a good morning’s work in the laboratory.”
“Oh no, not yet, uncle; we don’t seem to have started. It will only be a makeshift.”
“But we might put things a little more straight, boy.”
“Oh no, uncle; they are too straight now, and I want to go on deck.”
“Bah! It isn’t fit. Wait till the weather holds up.”
“Oh, I shall dress up accordingly, uncle. But I say, where does all the rain come from? It must be falling in millions of tons everywhere.”
“Ah, you might as well ask me where the wind comes from. Study up some book on meteorology.”