“We’re goin’ to have the biggest kind o’ a rainpour Captain.”
The Captain makes no immediate response. Still in the morose mood, communing with his own thoughts, the words fall upon his ear unmeaningly, as if from a distant echo.
After a time it occurs to him he has been spoken to and asks—
“What did you observe, Wingate?”
“That there be a rain storm threatening o’ the grandest sort. There’s flood enough now; but afore long it’ll be all over the meadows.”
“Why do you think that? I see no sign. The sky’s very much clouded true; but it has been just the same for the last several days.”
“’Tan’t the sky as tells me, Captain.”
“What then?”
“The heequall.”
“The heequall?”