Soon afterwards a violent wind rises; a man who could read the
sky perfectly or who possessed a barometer could have foretold that it
would. The simple people of a fishing-village have no barometers, and
only a few rough rules for prophesying weather. What more natural than
that the eccentric personage I postulated should be regarded as having
raised the wind, or that he or she should clutch eagerly at the
reputation of being able to do so? Now, take last night's wind: as it
happens, I myself was whistling. I blew a whistle twice, and the wind
seemed to come absolutely in answer to my call. If anyone had seen me--'
The audience had been a little restive under this harangue, and Parkins
had, I fear, fallen somewhat into the tone of a lecturer; but at the last
sentence the Colonel stopped.
'Whistling, were you?' he said. 'And what sort of whistle did you use?
Play this stroke first.' Interval.
'About that whistle you were asking, Colonel. It's rather a curious one.
I have it in my--No; I see I've left it in my room. As a matter of fact,
I found it yesterday.'
And then Parkins narrated the manner of his discovery of the whistle,
upon hearing which the Colonel grunted, and opined that, in Parkins's
place, he should himself be careful about using a thing that had belonged
to a set of Papists, of whom, speaking generally, it might be affirmed
that you never knew what they might not have been up to.
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