blue--the cordage strained and creaked, the hard sails pulled, and Messenger sped through the water with a delicious bubbling hiss. 

"How’s that, umpire?" demanded Crow, turning a smiling glance on Adrian, "kindly remember next time occasion rises, that it’s never worth while looking on the dark side." 

"The hot side, you mean," said Adrian unabashed, "where are we going now?" 

"Out," answered his sister briefly. "Good. Let’s get away from our native land for a bit--it’s stuffy. Besides, I want to look at it from a distance, it enlarges one’s mind."

So Christobel, like the master mariner in "The Wreck of the Hesperus", "steered for the open sea", and Adrian, whose appetite was enlarging as well as his mind, decided that dinner was of more importance than anything else, and diving into the saloon began fetching up plates, food, cups and lemonade; as Messenger was on an even keel, and the breeze held, the conditions were ideal and there was nothing to worry about. As they ate, they planned the excursion with precision. They were going out, but the ebbing tide was carrying them northward--Peterock way, that is to say; presently they would tack, and from a distance of some seven miles set a straight course on a "soldier’s wind" for the pretty town. They fixed the hour at which they would arrive, how long they would stop, and how short a time it would take them to get back--under the very satisfactory conditions of fair tide and fair wind.As a rule, this is the way of all ways to upset everything; and to-day the rule held good. First the wind dropped—dropped—and ceased. One moment the sails were drawing with firm pressure; actually the next moment they hung limp—not a cord stirring. At the same time, as Crow said, "someone blew the candle out".

As it happened she gave an exclamation and looked up. A bank of dense black cloud had covered the high sun that had shone upon them till then. The sky was divided in two by a distinct line. To seaward, blue, clear, exquisite. To landward and above the vivid broken coast hung massed clouds of most fearsome appearance. Clouds above clouds—the lowest, greyish battalions tearing along at headlong speed; above them others of purple black, moving statelily at a different angle; above them again piled heaps of strange shapes, shot and lined with coppery tints. These were moving at a different pace and in a different direction.

As far as eye could see over the hilly land was black. And the black was devouring the sunny blue.

Christobel 

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