"Well, then, you know some more things that are worth knowin' to a sailor-man, anyhow," declared Captain Whitby.
For twenty-four hours the schooner glided along slowly and quickly, the wind constantly drawing ahead and forcing her off her course. Then it fell dead calm, and a heavy swell began to roll in from the southeast.
"Mother," said Thornton, "don't be frightened, but we're going to have a storm."
"Mercy sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Seabury; "how do you know? The Captain hasn't said so."
"The barometer has fallen rapidly for the last six hours, and the wind has been backing from west to southwest and so on around to southeast," said Thornton, "and there's going to be a gale. The Captain hasn't said anything, because he does not wish to frighten you."
Two hours later it began to blow in short uneasy puffs from the southeast, and Captain Whitby ordered the top-sails and foretopmast stay-sail taken in. He laid the vessel by the wind on the starboard tack, intending to push out as far as possible from dangerous proximity to the coast. At six o'clock in the evening it was blowing freshly, and the long swells were cut up into foaming ridges.
"Get the fore-sail off her!" cried Captain Whitby to his little crew, and presently the big sheet of canvas was furled snugly on its boom.
"In jib, and lay aft to reef the mains'l!"
It was wild weather now, and no mistake. The big roaring green billows came raging down out of the dusk in the southeast, and as the schooner would lean far over to meet them it looked as if they were going to bury her. But as each sea approached, the schooner's bowsprit would swing upward with a great heave, the sea under-ran her, and down she came with a crash and a cloud of spray into the screeching hollow.
"I'll have to ask you all to go below," said the Captain; "it isn't safe for you to be on deck. You might get washed overboard."