The Captain had not finished his yarn-spinning—in fact, he was but in the middle of it—when the first mate thrust his head down the companionway.
"Will you come on deck, sir, and take a look at the glass on the way up?" he asked.
To my surprise, the Captain cast his tale adrift without an apology and hurried out, pausing for an instant only for a hasty glance at the barometer, which hung against the bulkhead at the foot of the ladder.
"It's evidently fallen calm," said Mr. Chaffee.
"And very glad am I that it has," answered his wife. "I think any more of that pitch and toss and I should have died."
For the last three-quarters of an hour, indeed, the Minetta had been stationary, heaving a little now and then, but in such a small way and keeping on such an even keel as scarcely to move the coffee in our cups. The Captain had been gone but a few minutes when we all went up on deck. The seas were round and oily, and the brown sails hung in lazy folds against the masts. The man at the wheel now and again gave the spokes a whirl this way and that, and he was forever casting his eye aloft as if by some motion of his he might catch a stray breath of wind.
It was past sundown, and there was a strange, suffused glow everywhere, more like dawn than the twilight of evening. But off to the northwest towered a black tumble of clouds that were edged with a fringe of lighter color. They were stretching upwards and peering grandly above the horizon-line like a range of growing mountains.
Suddenly a quiver of light flashed all around, and then a streak of forked lightning ripped horizontally, like a tear in a heavy curtain, against the pit of the cloud. The Captain went below at this, to look at the barometer again.
"It's falling, Mr. Norcross," he said, raising his head. "Shorten sail, sir, and be lively!"