ug, sir," he said. "There's dirty weather to windward, and we
haven't too much sea-room." He was an old man-of-war's boatswain, and
had had a tussle, in his time, on every sea and ocean in the known
world, with every wind that blows. He had rather a contempt for the
Mediterranean, esteeming it just one degree above the Cowes Roads, and
attaching about as much importance to its vagaries as one might do to
the fractiousness of a spoiled child. If he had been caught in the most
terrible tempest that ever desolated the shores of the Great Lake, I
don't believe he would have called it any thing but "dirty weather." He
was too good a sailor, though, not to take all precautions, even if he
had been sailing on a piece of ornamental water; and he went quickly
forward to give the necessary orders, after getting a nod of assent from
Guy.

The latter raised himself lazily on his arm, so as to see all round over
the low bulwarks. There was a blue-black bank of cloud rolling up from
the southwest. Puffs of wind, with no coolness in them, but dry and
uncertain as if stirred by some capricious artificial means, struck the
sails without filling them, and drove the _Petrel_ through the water by
fits and starts.

"I really believe we are going to have a white squall," Guy remarked,
indifferently. "Well, we shall see how the boat behaves. Riddell only
spoke just in time."

Suddenly his tone changed, and he said, quickly and decidedly, "Hold on
every thing!"

The master turned his weatherwise eye toward the quarter where the
danger lay, and frowned. "We're none too soon with it, Mr. Livingstone.
If there's a yard too much canvas spread when _that_ reaches us, I won't
answer for the spars."

Deeper and deeper the blackness came rushing down upon us, an angry
ridge of foam before it--the white squall showing its teeth.

Guy took the old man by the arm, and pointed to an object to leeward
that none on board had remarked yet. It was a small _barca_ with four
men in it. They were Capriotes, as we found afterward, the boldest
boatmen in the Bay. Had they been pure-bred Neapolitans, they would have
been down on their faces long ago, screaming out prayers to a long
muster-roll of saints. As it was, they stood manfully to their oars,
straining every muscle to reach us; there was no other safety for them
then. "They will never get alongside in time, unless we bear down to
meet them," Livingstone said, "and what chance will they have in ten
mi