“It’s going to blow, captain, isn’t it?” he called out.  Blows were what Archie was waiting for.  So far the sea had been like a mill-pond, except on one or two occasions, when, to the boy’s great regret, nothing came ashore.

“Looks like it.  Glass’s been goin’ down and the wind has settled to the nor’east.  Some nasty dough-balls out there I don’t like.  See ’em goin’ over that three-master?”

Archie looked, nodded his head, and a certain thrill went through him.  The harder it blew the better it would suit Archie.

“Will the Polly be here to-night?” he added.  “Your son’s coming, isn’t he?”

“Yes; but you won’t see him to-night, nor to-morrow, not till this is over.  You won’t catch old Ambrose out in this weather” (Captain Ambrose Farguson sailed the Polly).  “He’ll stick his nose in the basin some’er’s and hang on for a spell.  I thought he’d try to make the inlet, and I ’spected Bart here to-night till I saw the glass when I got up.  Ye can’t fool Ambrose—­he knows.  Be two or three days now ’fore Bart comes,” he added, a look of disappointment shadowing his face.

Archie kept on to the house, and the captain, after another sweep around, turned on his heel and reentered the sitting-room.

“Green!”

“Yes, captain.”  The surfman was on his feet in an instant, his ears wide open.

“I wish you and Fogarty would look over those new Costons and see if they’re all right.  And, Polhemus, perhaps you’d better overhaul them cork jackets; some o’ them straps seemed kind o’ awkward on practice yesterday—­they ought to slip on easier; guess they’re considerable dried out and a little mite stiff.”

Green nodded his head in respectful assent and left the room.  Polhemus, at the mention of his name, had dropped his chair legs to the floor; he had finished his game of dominoes and had been tilted back against the wall, awaiting the dinner-hour.

“It’s goin’ to blow a livin’ gale o’ wind, Polhemus,” the captain continued; “that’s what it’s goin’ to do.  Ye kin see it yerself.  There she comes now!”

As he spoke the windows on the sea side of the house rattled as if shaken by the hand of a man and as quickly stopped.

“Them puffs are jest the tootin’ of her horn—­” this with a jerk of his head toward the windows.  “I tell ye, it looks ugly!”

Polhemus gained his feet and the two men stepped to the sash and peered out.  To them the sky was always an open book—­each cloud a letter, each mass a paragraph, the whole a warning.

“But I’m kind o’ glad, Isaac.”  Again the captain forgot the surfman in the friend.  “As long as it’s got to blow it might as well blow now and be over.  I’d kind o’ set my heart on Bart’s comin’, but I guess I’ve waited so long I kin wait a day or two more.  I wrote him to come by train, but he wrote back he had a lot o’ plunder and he’d better put it ‘board the Polly; and, besides, he said he kind o’ wanted to sail into the inlet like he used to when he was a boy.  Then again, I couldn’t meet him; not with this weather comin’ on.  No—­take it all in all, I’m glad he ain’t comin’.”