Three miles south of the city, two fishermen stood looking at a pole on the pier. Two red flags with black centers were flapping in the wind. “Aw, nuts,” growled the big man. “Guess I’ll go home and nail up the windows again. This is the third time this year.” The little man started off, pulling his raincoat up around his ears as a squall came over. “Well, we can’t complain, I guess. The other times the flags went up we got storms, didn’t we? Looks like this will be the worst of the lot.” By that time the big fellow was running in a dog-trot and disappearing around a building. His father had been drowned in the big storm at Key West in 1919. Even on the other side of the State the people were worried, and for good reason, for it might be over there tomorrow. The forecaster was wanted again on the telephone. A man said in an anxious tone that he had one thousand five hundred unfenced cattle near the shore and what should he do? Without hesitation, the forecaster said, “Get them away from the water and behind a fence. This storm will go south of you. There will be strong offshore gales and the cattle will walk with the wind and go right out into the water and drown if there is no fence.” Out in the Atlantic, a merchant ship was wallowing in heavy seas, with one hundred miles an hour winds raking her decks. The third mate struggled through the wind and sea and into the radio room. He handed a wet weather message to the radio operator. A hundred miles away, in the Bahamas, an old Negro was reading his weather instruments and looking at the sky. He was pushed around by furious winds but they had died down a little since early morning. The roof was off his house. Trees were uprooted all around him. He went into a small, low-slung radio hut and attempted to send a weather message to Nassau. He was badly crowded in the hut. His wife, daughter and two grandchildren were huddled in the corners. His son-in-law had been killed in the night by a big tree that fell on the porch. His daughter and her two children were sobbing. He raised the Nassau radio station and sent a message for the forecast office in Miami. All up and down the Florida coast, many thousands had heard the radio warnings or had seen the flags flying and wanted to know more. The highways here and there were filling with people, leaving threatened places on the coast. By night the roads would be jammed. Out on the Privateer, the tall young radioman, sopping wet, raised himself in his chair, and took a soggy message from the weather officer. After the plane settled a little, he put on his head phones and listened to the loud, almost deafening static. He still felt a bit sick. But he began to pound out the weather message, with the hope that somebody would get it and pass it on to the forecaster.