'Then it will shift to the north-east by and by,' I replied. 'I am sure that I at any rate, will not sail to-morrow.'
That night, while we were watching a firework display on a hill above the village, the wind suddenly shifted to north-west and soon a violent gale was howling through the bending pines, and the Sound beneath us became white with foam. For two days it blew a hurricane. The fishermen, far from putting to sea, were all busy securing their vessels, for there was some danger of these being dashed to pieces even in this sheltered haven. No such storm had been known for some years, and there was much loss of life and shipping on the Baltic.
This made a convert of my friend the fisherman. 'I shall believe in barometers for the future,' he said. 'It is very fortunate for us that yesterday's fête kept us all in port. Had it taken place two Sundays ago, as was originally intended, we should now have been off Anholt, where there is no harbour or shelter, and I think that many of our vessels and lives would have been lost. A few years ago a gale came on suddenly like this one, and twenty boats were capsized by the seas on the Anholt shoals, and all hands were drowned.' Mine was actually the only glass in the harbour; but the accuracy of my forecast so impressed the Gillelie fishermen that they applied to the Danish Government for one of the barometers which it supplies to seaports for the public use.
