It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset. In the silence punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharp swish, swish of the sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly.
"We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the last to enter and bang the store door. "She's pullin' 'round into the no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while. Won't be no clams shipped from these flats to-morrow."
"High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper. "How dry ye'll be,
Milt, remains to be seen."
"In-side, or aout?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for
Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel.
Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner. "This wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said. "They was makin' some fillums over there on the wreck of the Goldrock, that's laid out four year or so in Ham Cove———"
"Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts.
"You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup.
"Well," said Amiel, "four or five. The heave of her made ha'f of 'em sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an' 'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned. I cal'late he's got enough."
"The gale that brought the Goldrock ashore had just such another beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively. "But she'd never been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right. They mutineed, you know."