Captain Joe pulled at his pipe slowly, and then looked gulfward and landward.
“’Tis make a red sky in de eas’ an’ de clouds hang low,” he remarked, shrugging his shoulders. “Dat make sometime bad night an’ cold an’ win’. But no troub’ on de schooner—all safe.”
It did not require these words to reassure the boys. The most direful predictions would hardly have disturbed their juvenile patter. When, about five o’clock, the Three Sisters rounded the west end of Santa Rosa Island and stood out to sea, Tom, Hal and Bob were on the forward deck, their legs sprawled out and their backs to the foremast, their hands and faces already salt encrusted and their tongues wagging.
As the little schooner finally came about and headed west, Bob exclaimed:
“It certainly gets cool quickly out here. Beyond the protection of the land, I suppose,” he added, as the Three Sisters began to feel the rising swell.
Tom, a little wiser, pointed to the east.
“Red sky in east at sunset means bad weather,” he said. “But I reckon we’ll be in the bay long befoah any wind comes up.”
But the evening chill rapidly increased. Hal nudged his companions and pointed sternward. Captain Romano’s brazier was already aglow. In another instant, the three spray soaked adventurers joined the skipper and Jerry about the little brick hearth. The Three Sisters was pulling like a horse, cutting her course true and straight, and the pot was on the brazier with supper preparing.
The boys huddled beneath the rail, glad to escape the freshening breeze and to enjoy the warm glow of the charcoal fire. Captain Joe’s meal was not complex—a plain beef stew with potatoes and onions. Jerry had peeled the potatoes—a labor he did not fail to describe several times over. As dusk came on, Captain Joe ordered Tom and Hal to light the port and starboard lights, and just before supper was served, he hung a ship’s lantern from the forward edge of the cockpit.