Brickett was standing with shoulder set against the side of his door, one eye on the shower that was crawling up the sky, the other on a man who sat in a waggon before the store and who endeavoured to engage him in conversation. “Hard-Times” Wharff was in his favourite position on one corner of the platform, his sharp nose tilted toward the heavens and his long hair waving in the first whispers from the approaching tempest. A man who was on the other corner of the platform stepped down as the showman came up. This person accosted Hiram brusquely.
“I’ve got a little bus’ness with you, mister,” he said.
It was Captain Nymphus Bodfish, saturnine and resolute.
Hiram was about to return an impatient retort about “other matters to attend to just then,” when he caught a word of the conversation between Brickett and the man in the waggon.
“Donno who it could be, I’m sure,” said Brickett.
“I allus knew there was some fools up this way,” said the man, with rough jest, “but I didn’t reckon that any of them was fool enough to start in a dory right out past Cod Head in the teeth o’ that thing comin’ up there.”
He nodded a languid head at the big cloud.
“I tell ye,” insisted Bodfish, pressing close to Hiram, “your’n and my bus’ness will have to be ‘tended to right now.”
“Did you say that you saw a dory makin’ out past Cod Head?” shouted Hiram at the man in the waggon, looking past and over Bodfish with an utter disregard that made the skipper grit his teeth.
“’Ep! Saw it as I was comin’ up the Cove ro’d,” returned the man.