the lookout for anything; yet I notice that he spends longer hours on
deck when the sky and barometer are threatening.

Yesterday we had a hint of Plate weather, and to-day an awesome
fiasco of the same. The hint came last evening between the twilight
and the dark. There was practically no wind, and the Elsinore, just
maintaining steerage way by means of intermittent fans of air from
the north, floundered exasperatingly in a huge glassy swell that
rolled up as an echo from some blown-out storm to the south.

Ahead of us, arising with the swiftness of magic, was a dense slate-
blackness. I suppose it was cloud-formation, but it bore no
semblance to clouds. It was merely and sheerly a blackness that
towered higher and higher until it overhung us, while it spread to
right and left, blotting out half the sea.

And still the light puffs from the north filled our sails; and still,
as the Elsinore floundered on the huge, smooth swells and the sails
emptied and flapped a hollow thunder, we moved slowly towards that
ominous blackness. In the cast, in what was quite distinctly an
active thunder cloud, the lightning fairly winked, while the
blackness in front of us was rent with blobs and flashes of
lightning.

The last puffs left us, and in the hushes, between the rumbles of the
nearing thunder, the voices of the men aloft on the yards came to
one's ear as if they were right beside one instead of being hundreds
of feet away and up in the air. That they were duly impressed by
what was impending was patent from the earnestness with which they
worked. Both watches toiled under both mates, and Captain West