CHAPTER XIII 

 ON SOME WEATHER PORTENTS 



A LUNAR halo which appeared on the night of Christmas 

 Day (1914) fully maintained the reputation of these 

 phenomena as precursors of bad weather. Christmas 

 Day itself opened with a thick fog, but the afternoon 

 brightened a little. The halo became visible not long 

 after dark, by which time the lower atmosphere was 

 quite free from fog. The latter circumstance, in the 

 light of what had gone before, betokened rain. 



Next morning (Boxing Day) I was awakened by the 

 dashing of hail against my window and the noise of 

 the wind thundering in the chimney. On looking out, 

 it was not the drenched and streaming street that first 

 attracted my attention, but the remarkable redness 

 of the sky in the south-east, which almost to the 

 zenith was aflame, as though the whole of that quarter 

 of London were on fire. The spectacle brought to my 

 mind the saying which I had often heard on my native 

 coast : 



A red sky in the morning 



Is the sailor's warning. 



The " warning," I must admit, was somewhat belated. 

 The Christmas night halo, however, had saved the 

 situation. 



Even while the red sky lasted, rain began to fall 



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