The bullets struck all around the rat, but didn't hit it, and we saw him disappear through a crevice between the stones of the quay.
"Our captain was a very superstitious man, and this incident troubled him, for I heard him say to the mate that he never knew any ship to have good luck when once the rats began to leave her.
"Soon after this we took in our cargo of pineapples and bananas and started for home.

Our first three days' run was as pretty as ever was made, and with the Gulf Stream to help us, it seemed as though we might make New York in time for Christmas, after all.

Then there came a change--first a gale that drove us to the westward, and then light head-winds, or no winds at all; and so we knocked round for three days more, and on the day before Christmas we hadn't rounded Hatteras, let alone made Sandy Hook, as we had hoped to do.
"It was a curious sort of a day, mild and hazy, with the sun showing round and yellow as an orange.

The skipper was uneasy, and kept squinting at the weather, first on one side and then the other.

We heard him say to the mate that something was coming, for the mercury was falling faster than he had ever seen it.