lunch, Rick braved the storm long enough to go to the _Water
Witch_ for his camera. He returned to the cottage soaked to the skin.
"We'll need diving equipment to go outside if this keeps up," he
announced.

He took the camera case apart and disconnected his circuits, then he
went outside again with tools in hand and got into the Sky Wagon. The
plane had a heater switch that would do. He removed it, leaving the
wires to dangle for the moment. If the heater was needed he could put
the wires together.

That done, he sat in the plane and racked his memory for a source of
sheet rubber. There was none, but he recalled a repair kit for the
plastic floats in their tool supply. He found it and took it back to the
house.

Using the awl blade on his scout knife, he bored a hole through the
plastic back of the case and installed the switch. Then he reconnected
his circuits so the new switch would turn on only the infrared light. He
waterproofed the switch as best he could, making gaskets from a rubber
jar ring he found in the kitchen.

He knew, however, that the switch wouldn't be waterproof under pressure.
He took a sheet of plastic repair material from the float repair kit and
shaped it carefully with his knife. After much trial and error he
succeeded in cementing it onto the case so that it would protect the
switch from the outside, but left enough slack for the switch to be
operated through the flexible patch. Satisfied, he put it aside to dry.

It was nearly time for dinner when he finished. He took a hand in
cooking ham and eggs with fried potatoes, while Tony prepared a salad
and made coffee.

As they ate, Zircon gestured toward the front of the house. "Getting
worse instead of letting up. This must be a hurricane, although I've
never heard of one quite this early in the season."

"If it gets much worse we'll have to anchor the cottage," Scotty
observed.

They finished just in time to tune in for the weather forecast from St.
Thomas. According to the announcer, the storm was now centered off the
island of St. Croix, moving in a northwesterly direction. That meant it
would pass St. Thomas, and perhaps come very close to them. The
announcer said, "While the storm has many of the characteristics of a
hurricane, including the general form and wind velocities, we hesitate
to designate it as one."

"In other words," Tony said, "it's a hurricane but we'll call it
something else because it's too early in the season for