them in after
that.

We thought no more about it after we had once started. The wind was
light and puffy; but we had great luck, and were too busy to watch the
weather. What wind there was, was northerly; but towards sunset it
dropped suddenly, and as the sails flapped we looked round at the sky.

"I fear old Dick was right, lads," Jabez Harper, who was skipper,
said, "and I wish we had taken more heed to his words. That's about as
wild a sunset as may be; and look how that drift is nearing our boat."

Even I, who was the youngest of them, was old enough to read the signs
of a storm--the heavy bank of dark clouds, the pale-yellow broken
light, the horse-tails high up in the sky, and the small broken
irregular masses of cloud that hurried across them. Instinctively we
looked round towards the coast. It was fully fifteen miles away, and
we were to the east of it. The great change in the appearance of the
sky had taken place in the last half-hour; previous to that time there
had been nothing which would have struck any but a man grown old upon
the coast like Dick Tremaine.

"Reef the mainsail," Jabez said, "and the foresail too; take in the
mizzen. Like enough it will come with a squall, and we'd best be as
snug as may be. What do you say? shall we throw over some of the
fish?"

It was a hard thing to agree to; but every minute the sky was
changing. The scud was flying thicker and faster overhead, and the
land was lost in a black cloud that seemed to touch the water.

"We needn't throw 'em all out," Jabez said; "if we get rid of half
she'll be about in her best trim; and she's as good a sea-boat as
there is on the coast. Come, lads, don't look at it."

It was, as he said, no use looking at it, and in five minutes half our
catch of the day was overboard. The _Jane_ was a half-decked boat,
yawl-rigged; she wasn't built in our parts, but had been brought round
from somewhere east by a gentleman as a fishing-craft. He had used her
for two years, and had got tired of the sport, and my father had
bought her of him. She wasn't the sort of boat generally used about
here, but we all liked her, and swore by her.

"It will be a tremendous blow for the first few minutes, I reckon,"
Jabez said after a while. "Lower down her sails altogether; get her
head to it with a sweep. I'll take the helm; Harry, you stand ready to
hoist the foresail a few feet; and, Will, you and John stand by the
hoists of the mainsail. We must show en