SYMPTOMS OF A STORM. 



the hail. Shin suis, Cormac /* Pass the wine, and a fig for 

 philosophy !" 



CHAPTER VII. 



Symptoms of a coming storm A Sportsman's Dinner Old John Pattigo 

 Gale comes on Shawn atra buoy Seals The blind Seal. 



THE morning had a sullen look ; Slieve More retained his 

 nightcap ; the edge of the horizon where the ocean met the 

 sky was tinged with a threatening glare of lurid sunshine ; the 

 \vind was capricious as a woman's love now swelling into 

 gusts, now sinking to a calm, as the unsteady breeze 

 shifted round to every point "i' the shipman's card." As 

 evening approached, the clouds collected in denser masses, 

 and the giant outline of Slieve More was lost in a sheet of 

 vapour. The . swell from the Atlantic broke louder on the 

 bar ; the piercing whistle of the curlew was heard more 

 frequently; and the small hard-weather tern, which seldom 

 leaves the Black Rock but to harbinger a coming tempest, w r as 

 ominously busy; whirling aloft in rapid circles, or plunging 

 its long and pointed wing into the broken surface of the billow. 

 All portended a storm ; the wind freshened momentarily, and 

 at last blew steadily from the south-east. 



I was at the door, engaged in speculating upon the signs of 

 the approaching gale, when old John, my kinsman's grey- 

 headed butler, summoned me to dinner. Some say that a 

 bachelor's repast has always a lonely and comfortless appear- 

 ance ; and it may be so. I grant that a sprinkling of the 

 sexes adds to the social character of the table ; but this apart, 

 with the abatement of that best society lovely woman, who 

 shall dine more luxuriously than I ? Two hours' rabbit-shoot- 

 ing in the sand-hills has given me a keen and wholesome 

 appetite. That salmon at noon was disporting in the sea, 

 and this kid was fatted among the heath-flowers of the 

 mountain-glen. Kitchener and Kelly could take no exception 

 to the cookery ; and had these worthies still been inhabitants 

 of "this fair round globe," the Doctor would have found 



* Play up, Cormac ! 



