The next morning the boys slept till the sun had risen and the captain awoke them to look upon a gorgeous picture seldom to be seen.  The unclouded sun was shining brilliantly and the eastern sky clear and bright, but in the west a storm was gathering.  There were snow-clad peaks brilliant with sunshine, thunder-heads black as midnight from which lightning was playing, while above and beneath them all shone a perfect double rainbow and an equally perfect reflection of it from the mirror-like surface of the Gulf.  So perfect a double-circled rainbow the captain had never before seen, and, though he lived near the coast, Johnny had never seen one at all.  By the time they had finished their breakfast of roast clams and ash-cake the rainbow had melted away and the storm-clouds were nearer, but Dick wanted to start on up the coast.  The captain shook his head and Johnny recited: 

“Rainbow in the mornin’, sailors take warnin’.”

Half an hour later all hands were glad to run to the fisherman’s house, from the doorway of which they looked out upon storm-driven sheets of rain that shut out the Gulf and fell in hissing masses upon the palmetto roof that covered them, while the continuous blaze of lightning and crash of thunder gave Dick his first taste of a tropical thunderstorm.  Half an hour later the sky was cloudless, the sun more brilliant than ever, and the only reminder of the storm that had passed was the sullen roar of the surf as the big waves broke on the beach.

When Johnny proposed to renew their voyage and the captain assented, it was Dick who held back.

“What can we do out there?” said he, waving his hand toward the white-capped waves that were sweeping in and sending their foam high up the beach.  Johnny only laughed in reply, but the captain and he dragged the dingy, in which two poles had been placed, out into the surf until the waves rolled waist deep past them.

“Tumble aboard, both of you,” ordered the captain, as he stood by the stern of the craft, holding its bow squarely against the incoming waves.  The boys climbed aboard, and Dick, following Johnny’s example, seized a pole and together they held the boat against the sweep of the surf until the captain was aboard with the oar in his hands.  It was exciting work and as they pushed on and out, with each new wave tossing the bow of the boat in the air and spilling its crest of water and foam over the gunwales, Dick exclaimed: 

“Isn’t it glorious?  I never had such fun,” and even the captain smiled assent.

They pushed on until outside of the breakers and among the smooth-rolling waves, where the deepening water made poling difficult and they resumed their sculling.  The captain took the first trick, while Johnny bailed out, with his cap, the water that the waves had spilled aboard.