Trustee From the Toolroom Read Online Free PDF

all tiddley.'
    John said, 'Going to be bad for little boys spitting on the deck. I think we'll lie off if we stay for any length of time.'
    On the second morning after they changed course the barometer displeased him. It was two millibars lower than it should have been according to the book; he tapped it gently, mindful of the delicacy of the mechanism, but it showed no difference. Jo was on deck at the helm when he made this discovery, for the wind had got up a bit and was veering towards the south, and Shearwater was now careering along with the spinnakers at a cock-eyed angle fore and aft, and needed someone at the helm. He bit his lip, and looked again at the barometer, but there was no sense in trying to argue with the evidence. They were late at Tahiti, and the hurricane season was now on.
    He sat down on his berth and turned to the sailing directions. He knew the part about tropical revolving storms pretty well by heart, for he was a careful seaman and had briefed himself before entering these waters. He read the page again. It fitted with his observations of the barometric pressure and the wind. Now it was up to him.
    The wind had already veered a little, so the centre of the storm, if storm it was, must lie away to the north-east, 200— 300 miles away from them. It would probably move west-south-west towards them at about ten knots, far faster than they could sail-to escape it. At some time it would turn towards the south. The wind direction showed them to be south of its path now. The course of safety was to run north and west before the increasing wind .. . and north of them lay the coral islands of the Tuamotus. If they escaped the., eye of the storm the wind would go on veering to the south and then to the south-west, blowing them dead on a lee shore.
    They must make towards, the west, every mile they could, to gain sea room.
    He put the book back in the bookcase, and went on deck. He looked around; the spinnakers were straining. It would be unwise to carry them much longer, anyway. He said to Jo,' I think we'll put the trysail on her, and take these in.'
    The trysail was their storm mainsail. 'The trysail?' she asked.
    'Barometer's dropping a bit,' he said.
    'Oh.' She knew the situation almost as well as he did. 'Want any help?'
    'Not yet.' He went below and bundled the heavy canvas up on deck through the forehatch, brought it aft of the mast and began to reeve the lacing, the halliard, and the sheets. It was work that he was well accustomed to and liked; while you were doing something physical like that you couldn't worry about falling glass and -veering winds. He hoisted the . sail in the calm air before the spinnaker and made the halliard fast, and pulled the sheet out to the cockpit, putting weight into the sail. Then he got down the lee spinnaker, and then the weather, stowing them both below. Finally he set the storm jib. Under the reduced canvas the yacht went more easily, with little reduction in her speed.
    He came aft to the cockpit. Jo asked, ' Is anything bad coming?'
    ' I don't know,' he said. ' She's going all right like this, anyway.'
    It was an hour since he had looked at the barometer. He went below and found that it had dropped another point; it was now three millibars below normal. He went back to his wife at the helm. ' I don't much like the look of it,' he said. 'We may be in for something.'
    She smiled at him. 'Too bad.' She remembered that you steered in certain directions to avoid the path of a tropical storm, but it was different in the northern and the southern hemispheres, and all a bit complicated. 'Ought we to change course ?'
    He shook his head. ' I think we'll keep on as we're going for a bit. See what the wind does. Like me to take her?'
    She relinquished the helm to him. ' I think I'll go below and make some sandwiches and put some coffee in the thermoses, if we're in for something.' She knew storms.
    All morning the wind rose steadily, veering a little as it rose. The sun grew