CHAPTER SEVEN.
A SOUTH-EASTERLY GALE.
"Oh, Nell!" cried Bob to his sister the same evening, some time after dinner, which, through their explorations on the beach, was somewhat later than usual--"I do wonder what that mysterious `something' is the Captain keeps promising us for `to-morrow.' Can he be thinking of taking us for a trip on the sea in his yacht, or what ?" "I wonder," was all Nellie could say in reply to her brother's remark, echoing, so to speak, his own words--"I do wonder--what he is going to do, Bob ?" Their anxious curiosity, however, availed them naught; the old sailor keeping provokingly silent and being as mute as the Sphinx on the subject, in spite of their wistful looks and watchfulness.
Throughout the evening the Captain only opened his lips to say to Mrs Gilmour, with whom he was playing one of those post-prandial games of cribbage which it had been his wont to indulge in before the advent of Bob and Nellie on the scene to interrupt their regular routine, "Fifteen four and two for his heels," or "I'll take three for a flush, ma'am," as the case might be.

He only made use of such-like technical phraseology common to cribbage players, limiting his conversation to the game alone; without leaving a loophole for either of the impatient listeners in the comer, who were turning over picture-books and otherwise diverting themselves, equally silently, till bedtime, to get in a word edgeways.
It was positively exasperating to Bob; especially as, the moment the old sailor chanced to notice one or other of the children eyeing him more attentively than usual on his looking up from the cards before him, he would smile knowingly and nod his head in the most waggish fashion.
"I don't think he means anything in particular at all," said the restless Master Bob a little later on to Nellie again.

"See how funny he looks! He's only `taking a rise' out of us, as he calls it." "No, Bob," said Nellie, catching another quizzical look from the Captain just at that moment, "I don't think that.

I'm sure he means something from that way he winked at us.

Besides, Bob, he promised, and you know that Captain Dresser never breaks his word!" Presently the report of the nine o'clock gun rolled through the night air, its echoes reverberating fainter and fainter until lost in the distance to seaward.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the Captain, throwing his cards on the table and rising from his seat,--"It's time for me to say good-night, or I shan't get any beauty sleep!" "It's not so very late," said Mrs Gilmour, rising and going towards the open window looking over the Common.