"And do you mean to say that you remember nothing whatever of the sea? Could you go aloft, for instance?"
Mr. Ruddle looked up aloft and shivered.
"Oh, I couldn't," he said. "The very look of the complicated apparatus with which I must have been once only too familiar fills me with peculiar horror."
"Well, I'm damned," said Gray. "What's the opposite point of the compass to sou'-east-by-sou'-half sou'-southerly?"
"I give it up. Tell me," said the minister simply.
Gray shook his head.
"You surprise me, sir. Can you tell when there is a mighty strong likelihoods of bad weather comin' along?"
"I'm not at all bad at guessing when it's likely to rain," said the former mate modestly. "I'm never caught in a shower without my umbrella."
And Gray shook his head again, and confided to the sea and air that Ruddle was a red wonder.
"If you don't know more about weather than that, you are going to have a fine chance to learn, Mr. Ruddle," said the skipper. "I smell a howling gale or I'm a double-distilled Dutchman. If it don't come out of nor'-east like a rampin', ragin', snortin' devil, call me no sailor, but the reddest kind of sojer."