CHAPTER XIX.
THE BREAKING OF THE DAWN September weather on Barnegat beach! Fine gowns and fine hats on the wide piazzas of Beach Haven! Too cool for bathing, but not too cool to sit on the sand and throw pebbles and loll under kindly umbrellas; air fresh and bracing, with a touch of June in it; skies full of mares'-tails--slips of a painter's brush dragged flat across the film of blue; sea gone to rest; not a ripple, no long break of the surf, only a gentle lift and fall like the breathing of a sleeping child.
Uncle Isaac shook his head when he swept his eye round at all this loveliness; then he turned on his heel and took a look at the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room of the Life-Saving Station.
The arrow showed a steady shrinkage.

The barometer had fallen six points.
"What do ye think, Captain Holt ?" asked the old surfman.
"I ain't thinkin', Polhemus; can't tell nothin' 'bout the weather this month till the moon changes; may go on this way for a week or two, or it may let loose and come out to the sou'-east I've seen these dog-days last till October." Again Uncle Isaac shook his head, and this time kept his peace; now that his superior officer had spoken he had no further opinion to express.
Sam Green dropped his feet to the floor, swung himself over to the barometer, gazed at it for a moment, passed out of the door, swept his eye around, and resumed his seat--tilted back against the wall.

What his opinion might be was not for publication--not in the captain's hearing.
Captain Holt now consulted the glass, picked up his cap bearing the insignia of his rank, and went out through the kitchen to the land side of the house.

The sky and sea--feathery clouds and still, oily flatness--did not interest him this September morning.

It was the rolling dune that caught his eye, and the straggly path that threaded its way along the marshes and around and beyond the clump of scrub pines and bushes until it was lost in the haze that hid the village.
This land inspection had been going on for a month, and always when Tod was returning from the post-office with the morning mail.