Far away towards the northeast, rising above the distant hill,
now showed an ugly-looking cloud-bank which almost certainly
portended a storm of no ordinary dimensions.

Had it first appeared in the opposite quarter of the horizon,
Bruno would have felt a stronger interest in the clouds, knowing
as he did that the miscalled "cyclone" almost invariably finds
birth in the southwest. Then, too, nearly all the other symptoms
were noticeable,--the close, "muggy" atmosphere; the deathlike
stillness; the lack of oxygen in the air, causing one to breathe
more rapidly, yet with far less satisfying results than usual.

Even as Bruno gazed, those heavy cloud-banks changed, both in
shape and in colour, taking on a peculiar greenish lustre which
only too accurately forebodes hail of no ordinary force.

His cry to this effect brought the professor forth from the
shed-like shanty, while Waldo roused up sufficiently to speak:

"To say nothing of yonder formation way out over the salty drink,
my worthy friends, who intimated that a cyclone was born at sea?"

Professor Featherwit frowned a bit as his keen little rat-like
eyes turned towards that quarter of the heavens; but the frown
was not for Waldo, nor for his slightly irreverent speech.

Where but a few minutes before there had been only a few light
clouds in sight, was now a heavy bank of remarkable shape, its
crest a straight line as though marked by an enormous ruler,
while the lower edge was broken into sharp points and irregular