Thus far we had all been much too strenuously engaged, and our attention too fully occupied, to take note of the weather; but now, as I glanced round at the lowering heavens and observed their threatening aspect, I bethought me that, fatigued though we all were, there still remained an abundance of work to be done in preparation for the storm that was evidently brewing.  For the sky was now completely overcast with a pall of dense, livid, purplish, slate-coloured cloud that clearly portended a gale; the wind was coming in hot, fierce, intermittent puffs that scourged the sea into miniature foam-flecked waves for a few seconds at a time and then dropped almost to a calm again, and upon looking at the barometer I saw that the mercury had fallen almost half-an-inch since I had last looked at it shortly before the commencement of the fight.  The Spaniard had vanished, and the pirate schooner was still running away to leeward.