The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured, and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring.  The vessel came up to the wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck.  Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.

Ebenezer whispered, “I heern you talkin’ about the gale, sir, and you’re right; we’ve got somethin’ to come.  I have a left arm that can beat any glass ever was seen.  I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we was snuggin’ her before the gale in ’66, and my arm went in four places.  Ever since then that there arm tells every change as plain as plain can be.  Yes, sir, it’s hard to die, even out off a North Sea smack, as you say.  Just before the ’66 breeze I used often to think, ’Shall I go overboard?’ but when we was disabled, and skipper told us ’twas every man for hisself, I looked queer.  My arm says there’s bad a-comin’, and I know you don’t skeer easy, or a wouldn’t tell you.”

A hollow sound filled the whole arch of the sky; it was a great, bewildering sound like a cry—­an immense imprecation of some stricken Titan.

“What can that be?” murmured Lennard, with his bold face blanched.  “That caps everything.”

The masterful sound held on for a little, and then sank into a tired sort of moan.

“Callin’ them together, sir,—­that’s what some o’ the West Country chaps calls the King o’ the Winds speakin’.  It’s only snow gettin’ locked in the sky, and you’ll see it come away in a little.”

“I don’t know what it is, Ebenezer, but I don’t like it.”

On deck the night was black, the splendid green of the west had burnt out, and a breeze was making little efforts from time to time, with little hollow moans.

“Bad, bad, bad, bad, sir,” barked the skipper, angrily.

The vanward flights of twirling flakes came on then, as if suddenly unleashed, the wind sprang up, and the great fight began.  If you, whoever you may be, and two more strong men had tried to shut an ordinary door in the teeth of that first shock, you would have failed, for the momentum was like that of iron.

“Steady, and look out,” the skipper yelled.

The third hand was lifted off his feet and dashed into the lee channels.  Ferrier fought hard, but he was clutched by the hand of the wind, and held against the mizen-mast; he could just clutch the rest in which a lifebuoy was hanging, and that alone saved him from being felled.

The Lord is a Man of War!  Surely His hosts were abroad now.  No work of man’s hands could endure the onset of the forces let loose on that bad night.  The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the wind.  Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck.  No one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled assault of the hurricane had touched the nerve of the coolest.