Broos Campbell

“I went to the railing and looked out over the sea. It had been fussing earlier in the day, but now it lay greasy and hushed. 'You got a tremendous prospect from up here, Brother Assembly.'

'Aye. Two evenings hence, for instance, I noted thy schooner passing westward. I also saw a cutter at the same time, a low and black-hulled cutter, British from the look of her, beating eastward beyond Vandyke's. She kept the island betwixt herself and thee, and sailed on into yon flat ugly yellow clouds.' He nodded to the east.

I got a crawly feeling between my shoulders, like I'd been hunting a panther and discovered it had been hunting me. 'Well, then,' I said, 'I guess I'd best be shoving off.'

'Tomorrow is the first of October. There have been no hurricanes yet this season worth mentioning, but a noteworthy one approaches now, thou mustn't doubt. Do not cling too tightly to ephemeral notions and worldly things, Brother, lest thou lose what thou most values.' He whistled an old Shaker hymn that was popular among the Brethren:
'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be...

I knocked on the railing, annoyed with myself for my superstitiousness but angrier with Assembly for baiting me. 'Of all the infernal meanness,' I said. 'Don't whistle for a wind in hurricane season!'

'Oh, as for that,' he said, the corners of his naked lip turning up just a little bit, 'God watches out for sailors and the wicked, is't not what sailors say? And the wicked, too, I doubt not.”
― Broos Campbell, Peter Wicked