"Huh!" Pudge responded, patting his protuberant waistline ruefully. "I don't like a belt. 'Tain't comferble. Ow!"
A startling clap of thunder broke directly over their heads. A chill breath of air swept through the aisles of the wood.
"We're going to get wet," sang out Ben.
"Well, we're neither sugar nor salt. We won't melt," Kirby returned. "There's the sea. My! Get onto the whitecaps, boys!"
A vivid flash of lightning stained the slate-colored horizon. Again the thunder broke and rolled away in reverberating echoes. The sky was completely overcast on the seaward side of the island, and the clouds were now rolling up to the zenith. The sun was wiped out, while the wind soughed in the treetops.
"My!" murmured Pudge, having recovered his cap and his good temper. "Going to be some storm."
It was Pence who spied the catboat. Not a sail nor a smudge of smoke betrayed the presence of any larger vessel upon the skyline; but close in under the island—so close that it seemed Horace might have thrown the ball in his hand into her cockpit—sailed a catrigged boat, perhaps twenty-four feet long, and broad of beam.
She was just tacking and, as her boom swung heavily to port, the boys on the brink of the wooded cliff noted that there were five figures visible in the boat. They were evidently preparing for the coming squall, although no reef had been as yet taken in the sail.
"Getting into their slickers," said Harry Kirby. "They're all young chaps, aren't they?"
"Don't see any that look as though they'd voted many times," drawled Horace.