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.
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