"Here is a wild night of inky darkness. The star occults only at
three A.M. This hurricane ruins all. And old man Fraser may not
have returned from London." So with a basket of luncheon, a roll
of blankets, and a bottle of cocktails, the volunteer astronomer
reluctantly sought the dryest corner of the second floor of the
old tower for a night's camp. A square trapdoor hole whence the
moldering ladder had fallen away, was in the middle of the old
barrack room floor over the four embrasured gun room below. "I'll
just draw up my ladder, have a pipe, and take a nap. It may clear
off. If so the observation goes, and then the highest tide of the
year, I can get the register in the morning."
He had brought down his light instrument from the battlemented
parapet for safety, and now, pulling up his rope ladder, he coiled
it on the floor. "I can drop down below if I wish to if the rain
should drive me out of here," he cried as he curled up like a
sleeping coyote.
Below him the heavy door of the tower swung on its massive hinges,
banging and creaking mournfully when a swirling gust set it swinging.
The man who had slept out on the Lolo trail and bivouacked alone
in the canyon of the Colorado, laughed the howling storm to scorn.
"Better than being out in a blizzard in the Bad Lands!" he gayly
cried, as he dozed away, having finished a good meal and lowered
the level of the "Lone Wolf" cocktails.
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