26 ALONGSHORE t 



never taken aback by such purdling winds. He 

 curses them for baffling him, and for fulfilling 

 his expectations he approves them, all in the 

 same breath. He is the winds' candid friend. 



Immoderate weather is sufficiently predicted by 

 the Meteorological Office, by barometers, and by 

 chemical weather-glasses, the liquid inside of which 

 fills with feathery crystals on the approach of 

 storm — or, misleadingly enough, during fine frosty 

 spells. On our local and on moderate weather 

 Benjie is still the supreme authority, whatever 

 science says. The rest of us know that brassy 

 skies mean brazen weather; that a hard eastern 

 horizon presages an easterly wind; that when the 

 high white clouds, instead of racing out to sea 

 with a brisk northerly breeze, stay almost motion- 

 less above it, then the wind will back out and 

 blow harder; that little white ragged clouds — 

 Benjie calls them messengers — floating underneath 

 the darker higher masses, foretell wild weather; 

 that southerly winds are felt first on the tops of 

 the clifis; that the weather changes usually on 

 the turn of tide; that swells precede storms as 

 well as follow them; that fine 'foxy' days, when 

 hot sunshine burns the breeze up, don't last; and 

 that sunset and dawn have a hundred secrets to 



