“I’ the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show?”
_Macbeth._
The division of employment that is found in Europe, and which brings,
in its train, a peculiar and corresponding limitation of ideas, has
never yet existed in our country. If our artisans have, in consequence
been less perfect in their several handicrafts, they have ever been
remarkable for intelligence of a more general character. Superstition
is however, a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean. Few common
mariners are exempt from its influence, in a greater or less degree;
though it is found to exist, among the seamen of different people, in
forms that are tempered by their respective national habits and
peculiar opinions. The sailor of the Baltic has his secret rites, and
his manner of propitiating the gods of the wind; the Mediterranean
mariner tears his hair, and kneels before the shrine of some impotent
saint, when his own hand might better do the service he implores; while
the more skilful Englishman sees the spirits of the dead in the storm,
and hears the cries of a lost messmate in the gusts that sweep the
waste he navigates. Even the better instructed and still more reasoning
American has not been able to shake entirely off the secret influence
of a sentiment that seems the concomitant of his condition.
There is a majesty, in the might of the great deep that has a tendency
to keep open the avenues of that dependant credulity which more or less
besets the mind of every man, however he may have fortified his
intellect by thought. With the firmament above him, and wandering on an
interminable waste of water, the less gifted seaman is tempted, at
every step of his pilgrimage, to seek the relief of some propitious
omen. The few which are supported by scientific causes give support to
the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting
temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage
of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the
screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient
soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The
confusion between things which are explicable, and things which are
not, gradually brings the mind of the mariner to a state in which any
exciting and unnatural sentiment is welcome, if it be or no other
reason than that, like the vast element on which he passes his life, it
bears the impression of what is thought a supernatural, because it is
an incomprehensible, power.
The crew of the “Royal Caroline” had not even the advantage of being
natives of a land where necessity and habit have united to bring every
man’s faculties into exercise, to a certain extent at least. They were
all from that distant island that has been, and still continues to be,
the hive of nations, which are probably fated to carry her name to a
time when the sight of her fallen power shall be sought as a curiosity,
like the remains of a city in a desert.
The whole events of that day of which we are now writing had a tendency
to arouse the latent superstition of these men. It has already been
said, that the calamity which had befallen their former Commander, and
the manner in which a stranger had succeeded to his authority, had
their influence in increasing their disposition to doubt. The sail to
leeward appeared most inopportunely for the character of our
adventurer, who had not yet enjoyed a fitting opportunity to secure the
confidence of his inferiors, before such untoward circumstances
occurred as threatened to deprive him of it for ever.
There has existed but one occasion for introducing to the reader the
mate who filled the station in the ship next to that of Earing. He was
called Nighthead; a name that was, in some measure, indicative of a
certain misty obscurity that beset his superior member. The qualities
of his mind may be appreciated by the few reflections he saw fit to
make on the escape of the old mariner whom Wilder had intended to visit
with a portion of his indignation. This individual, as he was but one
degree removed from the common men in situation, so was he every way
qualified to maintain that association with the crew which was, in some
measure, necessary between them. His influence among them was
commensurate to his opportunities of intercourse, and his sentiments
were very generally received with a portion of that deference which is
thought to be due to the opinions of an oracle.
After the ship had been worn, and during the time that Wilder, with a
view to lose sight of his unwelcome neighbour, was endeavouring to urge
her through the seas in the manner already described, this stubborn and
mystified tar remained in the waist of the vessel, surrounded by a few
of the older and more experienced seamen, holding converse on the
remarkable appearance of the phantom to leeward, and of the
extraordinary manner in which their unknown officer saw fit to attest
the enduring qualities of their own vessel. We shall commence our
relation of the dialogue at a point where Nighthead saw fit to
discontinue his distant inuendos, in order to deal more directly with
the subject he had under discussion.
“I have heard it said, by older sea-faring men than any in this ship,”
he continued, “that the devil has been known to send one of his mates
aboard a lawful trader, to lead her astray among shoals and quicksands,
in order that he might make a wreck, and get his share of the salvage,
among the souls of the people. What man can say who gets into the
cabin, when an unknown name stands first in the shipping list of a
vessel?”
“The stranger is shut in by a cloud!” exclaimed one of the mariners,
who, while he listened to the philosophy of his officer, still kept an
eye riveted on the mysterious object to leeward.
“Ay, ay; it would occasion no surprise to see that craft steering into
the moon! Luck is like a fly-block and its yard: when one goes up, the
other comes down. They say the red-coats ashore have had their turn of
fortune, and it is time we honest seamen look out for our squalls. I
have doubled the Horn, brothers, in a King’s ship, and I have seen the
bright cloud that never sets, and have held a living corposant in my
own hand: But these are things which any man may look on, who will go
upon a yard in a gale, or ship aboard a Southseaman: Still, I pronounce
it uncommon for a vessel to see her shadow in the haze, as we have ours
at this moment for there it comes again!—hereaway, between the
after-shroud and the backstay—or for a trader to carry sail in a
fashion that would make every knee in a bomb-ketch work like a
tooth-brush fiddling across a passenger’s mouth, after he had had a
smart bout with the sea sickness.”
“And yet the lad holds the ship in hand,” said the oldest of all the
seamen, who kept his gaze fastened on the proceedings of Wilder; “he is
driving her through it in a mad manner, I will allow; but yet, so far,
he has not parted a yarn.”
“Yarns!” repeated the mate, in a tone of strong contempt; “what signify
yarns, when the whole cable is to snap, and in such a fashion as to
leave no hope for the anchor, except in a buoy rope? Hark ye, old Bill;
the devil never finishes his jobs by halves: What is to happen will
happen bodily; and no easing-off, as if you were lowering the Captain’s
lady into a boat, and he on deck to see fair play.”
“Mr Nighthead knows how to keep a ship’s reckoning in all weathers!”
said another, whose manner sufficiently announced the dependance he
himself placed on the capacity of the second mate.
“And no credit to me for the same. I have seen all services, and
handled every rig, from a lugger to a double-decker! Few men can say
more in their own favour than myself; for the little I know has been
got by much hardship, and small schooling. But what matters
information, or even seamanship against witchcraft, or the workings of
one whom I don’t choose to name, seeing that there is no use in
offending any gentleman unnecessarily? I say, brothers that this ship
is packed upon in a fashion that no prudent seaman ought to, or would,
allow.”
A general murmur announced that most, if not all, of his hearers
accorded in his opinion.
“Let us examine calmly and reasonably, and in a manner becoming
enlightened Englishmen, into the whole state of the case,” the mate
continued, casting an eye obliquely over his shoulder, perhaps to make
sure that the individual, of whose displeasure he stood in such
salutary awe, was not actually at his elbow. “We are all of us, to a
man, native-born islanders, without a drop of foreign blood among us;
not so much as a Scotchman or an Irishman in the ship. Let us therefore
look into the philosophy of this affair, with that sort of judgment
which becomes our breeding. In the first place, here is honest Nicholas
Nichols slips from this here water-cask, and breaks me a leg! Now,
brothers, I’ve known men to fall from tops and yards, and lighter
damage done. But what matters it, to a certain person, how far he
throws his man, since he has only to lift a finger to get us all
hanged? Then, comes me aboard here a stranger, with a look of the
colonies about him, and none of your plain-dealing, out-and-out, smooth
English faces, such as a man can cover with the flat of his hand.”—
“The lad is well enough to the eye,” interrupted the old mariner.
“Ay, therein lies the whole deviltry of this matter! He is
good-looking, I grant ye; but it is not such good-looking as an
Englishman loves. There is a meaning about him that I don’t like; for I
never likes too much meaning in a man’s countenance, seeing that it is
not always easy to understand what he would be doing. Then, this
stranger gets to be Master of the ship, or, what is the same thing,
next to Master; while he who should be on deck giving his orders, in a
time like this, is lying in his birth unable to tack himself, much less
to put the vessel about; and yet no man can say how the thing came to
pass.”
“He drove a bargain with the consignee for the station, and right glad
did the cunning merchant seem to get so tight a youth to take charge of
the ‘Caroline.’”
“Ah! a merchant is, like the rest of us, made of nothing better than
clay; and, what is worse, it is seldom that, in putting him together,
he is dampened with salt water. Many is the trader that has douzed his
spectacles, and shut his account-books, to step aside to over-reach his
neighbour, and then come back to find that he has over-reached himself.
Mr Bale, no doubt, thought he was doing the clever thing for the
owners, when he shipped this Mr Wilder; but then, perhaps, he did not
know that the vessel was sold to ——— It becomes a plain-going seaman to
have a respect for all he sails under; so I will not, unnecessarily,
name the person who, I believe, has got, whether he came by it in a
fair purchase or not, no small right in this vessel.”
“I have never seen a ship got out of irons more handsomely than he
handled the ‘Caroline’ this very morning.”
Nighthead now indulged in a low, but what to his listeners appeared to
be an exceedingly meaning, laugh.
“When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one is not to be surprised
at any thing,” he answered the instant his significant merriment had
ceased. “For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to the Carolinas
and Jamaica, touching at Newport out and home; and I will say, boldly,
I have no wish to go any where else. As to backing the ‘Caroline’ from
her awkward birth alongside the slaver, why it was well done; most too
well for so young a manner. Had I done the thing myself, it could not
have been much better. But what think you, brothers of the old man in
the skiff? There was a chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs
have the fortune to behold! I have heard of a smuggler that was chased
a hundred times by his Majesty’s cutters, in the chops of the Channel,
and which always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man
could truly say he ever saw her come again! This skiff may have plied
between the land and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the
contrary; but it is not a boat I wish to pull a scull in.”
“That _was_ a remarkable flight!” exclaimed the elder seaman, whose
faith in the character of our adventurer began to give way gradually,
before such an accumulation of testimony.
“I call it so; though other men may possibly know better than I, who
have only followed the water five-and-thirty years. Then, here is the
sea getting up, in an unaccountable manner! and look at these rags of
clouds, which darken the heavens! and yet there is light enough, coming
from the ocean, for a good scholar to read by!”
“I’ve often seen the weather as it is now.”
“Ay, who has not? It is seldom that any man, let him come from what
part he will, makes his first voyage as Captain. Let who will be out
to-night upon the water, I’ll engage he has been there before. I have
seen worse looking skies, and even worse looking water, than this; but
I never knew any good come of either. The night I was wreck’d in the
bay of”——
“In the waist there!” cried the calm, authoritative tones of Wilder.
Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent and rushing ocean itself,
it would not have sounded more alarming, in the startled ears of the
conscious seamen, than this sudden hail. Their young Commander found it
necessary to repeat it, before even Nighthead, the proper and official
spokesman, could muster resolution to answer.
“Get the fore-top-gallant-sail on the ship, sir,” continued Wilder,
when the customary reply let him know that he had been heard.
The mate and his companions regarded each other, for a moment, in dull
admiration; and many a melancholy shake of the head was exchanged,
before one of the party threw himself into the weather-rigging, and
proceeded aloft, with a doubting mind, in order to loosen the sail in
question.
There was certainly enough, in the desperate manner with which Wilder
pressed the canvas on the vessel, to excite distrust, either of his
intentions or judgment, in the opinions of men less influenced by
superstition than those it was now his lot to command. It had long been
apparent to Earing, and his more ignorant, and consequently more
obstinate, brother officer, that their young superior had the same
desire to escape from the spectral-looking ship, which so strangely
followed their movements, as they had themselves. They only differed in
the mode; but this difference was so very material, that the two mates
consulted together apart, and then Earing, something stimulated by the
hardy opinions of his coadjutor, approached his Commander, with the
determination of delivering the results of their united judgments, with
that sort of directness which he thought the occasion now demanded. But
there was that in the steady eye and imposing mien of Wilder, that
caused him to touch on the dangerous subject with a discretion and
circumlocution that were a little remarkable for the individual. He
stood watching the effect of the sail recently spread for several
minutes, before he even presumed to open his mouth. But a terrible
encounter, between the vessel and a wave that lifted its angry crest
apparently some dozen feet above the approaching bows, gave him courage
to proceed, by admonishing him afresh of the danger of continuing
silent.
“I do not see that we drop the stranger, though the ship is wallowing
through the water so heavily,” he commenced, determined to be as
circumspect as possible in his advances.
Wilder bent another of his frequent glances on the misty object in the
horizon, and then turned his frowning eye towards the point whence the
wind proceeded, as if he would defy its heaviest blasts; he, however,
made no answer.
“We have ever found the crew discontented at the pumps, sir,” resumed
the other, after a pause sufficient for the reply he in vain expected;
“I need not tell an officer, who knows his duty so well, that seamen
rarely love their pumps.”
“Whatever I may find necessary to order, Mr Earing, this ship’s company
will find it necessary to execute.”
There was a deep settled air of authority, in the manner with which
this tardy answer was given, that did not fail of its impression.
Earing recoiled a step, with a submissive manner, and affected to be
lost in consulting the driving masses of the clouds; then, summoning
his resolution, he attempted to renew the attack in a different
quarter.
“Is it your deliberate opinion, Captain Wilder,” he said, using the
title to which the claim of our adventurer might well be questioned,
with a view to propitiate him; “is it then your deliberate opinion that
the ‘Royal Caroline’ can, by any human means, be made to drop yonder
vessel?”
“I fear not,” returned the young man, drawing a breath so long, that
all his secret concern seemed struggling in his breast for utterance.
“And, sir, with proper submission to your better education and
authority in this ship, I _know_ not. I have often seen these matches
tried in my time; and well do I know that nothing is gained by
straining a vessel, with the hope of getting to windward of one of
these flyers!”
“Take you the glass, Earing, and tell me under what canvas the stranger
holds his way, and what may be his distance,” said Wilder,
thoughtfully, and without appearing to advert at all to what the other
had just observed.
The honest and well-meaning mate deposed his hat on the quarter-deck,
and, with an air of great respect, did as he was desired. Nor did he
deem it necessary to give a precipitate answer to either of the
interrogatories. When, however, his look had been long, grave, and
deeply absorbed, he closed the glass with the palm of his broad hand,
and replied, with the manner of one whose opinion was sufficiently
matured.
“If yonder sail had been built and fitted like other mortal craft,” he
said, “I should not be backward in pronouncing her a full-rigged ship,
under three single-reefed topsails, courses, spanker, and jib.”
“Has she no more?”
“To that I would qualify, provided an opportunity were given me to make
sure that she is, in all respects, as other vessels are.”
“And yet, Earing, with all this press of canvas, by the compass we have
not left her a foot.”
“Lord, sir,” returned the mate, shaking his head, like one who was well
convinced of the folly of such efforts, “if you should split every
cloth in the main-course, by carrying on the ship you will never alter
the bearings of that craft an inch, till the sun rises! Then, indeed,
such as have eyes, that are good enough, might perhaps see her sailing
about among the clouds; though it has never been my fortune be it bad
or be it good, to fall in with one of these cruisers after the day has
fairly dawned.”
“And the distance?” said Wilder; “you have not yet spoken of her
distance.”
“That is much as people choose to measure. She may be here, nigh enough
to toss a biscuit into our tops; or she may be there, where she seems
to be, hull down in the horizon.”
“But, if where she seems to be?”
“Why, she _seems_ to be a vessel of about six hundred tons; and,
judging from appearances only, a man might be tempted to say she was a
couple of leagues, more or less, under our lee.”
“I put her at the same! Six miles to windward is not a little
advantage, in a hard chase. By heavens, Earing, I’ll drive the
‘Caroline’ out of water but I’ll leave him!”
“That might be done, if the ship had wings like a curlew, or a
sea-gull; but, as it is, I think we are more likely to drive her
under.”
“She bears her canvas well, so far. You know not what the boat can do,
when urged.”
“I have seen her sailed in all weathers, Captain Wilder, but”——
His mouth was suddenly closed. A vast black wave reared itself between
the ship and the eastern horizon, and came rolling onward, seeming to
threaten to ingulf all before it. Even Wilder watched the shock with
breathless anxiety, conscious, for the moment that he had exceeded the
bounds of sound discretion in urging his ship so powerfully against
such a mass of water. The sea broke a few fathoms from the bows of the
“Caroline,” and sent its surge in a flood of foam upon her decks. For
half a minute the forward part of the vessel disappeared, as though,
unable to mount the swell, it were striving to go through it, and then
she heavily emerged, gemmed with a million of the scintillating insects
of the ocean. The ship had stopped, trembling in every joint,
throughout her massive and powerful frame, like some affrighted
courser; and, when she resumed her course, it was with a moderation
that appeared to warn those who governed her movements of their
indiscretion.
Earing faced his Commander in silence, perfectly conscious that nothing
he could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer
hesitated to mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic
opinion was ventured concerning the consequences of such reckless
risks. To all this Wilder turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in
his own secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard to
accomplish his object. But a distinct though smothered shriek, from the
stern of the vessel, reminded him of the fears of others. Turning
quickly on his heel, he approached the still trembling Gertrude and her
governess, who had both been, throughout the whole of those long and
tedious hours, inobtrusive but deeply interested, observers of his
smallest movements.
“The vessel bore that shock so well, I have great reliance on her
powers,” he said in a soothing voice, but with words that were intended
to lull her into a blind security. “With a firm ship, a thorough seaman
is never at a loss!”
“Mr Wilder,” returned the governess, “I have seen much of this terrible
element on which you live. It is therefore vain to think of deceiving
me I know that you are urging the ship beyond what is usual. Have you
sufficient motive for this hardihood?”
“Madam,—I have!”
“And is it, like so many of your motives, to continue locked for ever
in your own breast? or may we, who are equal participators in its
consequences, claim to share equally in the reason?”
“Since you know so much of the profession,” returned the young man,
slightly laughing, but in tones that were rendered perhaps more
alarming by the sounds produced in the unnatural effort, “you need not
be told, that, in order to get a ship to windward, it is necessary to
spread her canvas.”
“You can, at least, answer one of my questions more directly: Is this
wind sufficiently favourable to pass the dangerous shoals of the
Hatteras?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then, why not go to the place whence we came?”
“Will you consent to return?” demanded the youth, with the swiftness of
thought.
“I would go to my father,” said Gertrude, with a rapidity so nearly
resembling his own, that the ardent girl appeared to want breath to
utter the little she said.
“And I am willing, Mr Wilder, to abandon the ship entirely,” calmly
resumed the governess. “I require no explanation of all your mysterious
warnings; restore us to our friends in Newport, and no further
questions shall ever be asked.”
“It might be done!” muttered our adventurer; “it might be done!—A few
busy hours would do it, with this wind.—Mr Earing!”—
The mate was instantly at his elbow. Wilder pointed to the dim object
to leeward; and, handing him the glass, desired that he would take
another view. Each looked, in his turn, long and closely.
“He shows no more sail!” said the Commander impatiently, when his own
prolonged gaze was ended.
“Not a cloth, sir. But what matters it, to such a craft, how much
canvas is spread, or how the wind blows?”
“Earing, I think there is too much southing in this breeze; and there
is more brewing in yonder streak of dusky clouds on our beam. Let the
ship fall off a couple of points, or more, and take the strain off the
spars, by a pull upon the weather braces.”
The simple-minded mate heard the order with an astonishment he did not
care to conceal. There needed no explanation, to teach his experienced
faculties that the effect would be to go over the same track they had
just passed, and that it was, in substance abandoning the objects of
the voyage. He presumed to defer his compliance, in order to
remonstrate.
“I hope there is no offence for an elderly seaman, like myself, Captain
Wilder, in venturing an opinion on the weather,” he said. “When the
pocket of the owner is interested, my judgment approves of going about,
for I have no taste for land that the wind blows on, instead of off.
But, by easing the ship with a reef or two, she would be jogging sea
ward; and all we gain would be clear gain; because it is so much off
the Hatteras. Besides, who can say that to-morrow, or the next day, we
sha’n’t have, a puff out of America, here at north-west?”
“A couple of points fall off, and a pull upon your weather braces,”
said Wilder, with startling quickness.
It would have exceeded the peaceful and submissive temperament of the
honest Earing, to have delayed any longer. The orders were given to the
inferiors; and, as a matter of course, they were obeyed—though
ill-suppressed and portentous sounds of discontent at the undetermined,
and seemingly unreasonable changes in their officer’s mind might been
heard issuing from the mouths of Nighthead, and other veterans of the
crew.
But to all these symptoms of disaffection Wilder remained, as before,
utterly indifferent. If he heard them at all, he either disdained to
yield them any notice, or, guided by a temporizing policy, he chose to
appear unconscious of their import. In the mean time, the vessel, like
a bird whose wing had wearied with struggling against the tempest, and
which inclines from the gale to dart along an easier course, glided
swiftly away, quartering the crests of the waves, or sinking gracefully
into their troughs, as she yielded to the force of a wind that was now
made to be favourable. The sea rolled on, in a direction that was no
longer adverse to her course; and, as she receded from the breeze, the
quantity of sail she had spread was no longer found trying to her
powers of endurance. Still she had, in the opinion of all her crew,
quite enough canvas exposed to a night of such a portentous aspect. But
not so, in the judgment of the stranger who was charged with the
guidance of her destinies. In a voice that still admonished his
inferiors of the danger of disobedience he commanded several broad
sheets of studding-sails to be set, in quick succession. Urged by these
new impulses, the ship went careering over the waves; leaving a train
of foam, in her track, that rivalled, in its volume and brightness, the
tumbling summit of the largest swell.
When sail after sail had been set, until even Wilder was obliged to
confess to himself that the “Royal Caroline,” staunch as she was, would
bear no more, our adventurer began to pace the deck again, and to cast
his eyes about him, in order to watch the fruits of his new experiment.
The change in the course of the Bristol trader had made a corresponding
change in the apparent direction of the stranger who yet floated in the
horizon like a diminutive and misty shadow. Still the unerring compass
told the watchful mariner, that she continued to maintain the same
relative position as when first seen. No effort, on the part of Wilder,
could apparently alter her bearing an inch. Another hour soon passed
away, during which, as the log told him, the “Caroline” had rolled
through more than three leagues of water, and still there lay the
stranger in the west, as though it were merely a lessened shadow of
herself, cast by the “Caroline” upon the distant and dusky clouds. An
alteration in his course exposed a broader surface of his canvas to the
eyes of the spectators, but in nothing else was there any visible
change. If his sails had been materially increased, the distance and
the obscurity prevented even the understanding Earing from detecting
it. Perhaps the excited mind of the worthy mate was too much disposed
to believe in the miraculous powers possessed by his unaccountable
neighbour, to admit of the full exercise of his experienced faculties
on the occasion; but even Wilder, who vexed his sight, in
often-repeated examinations, was obliged to confess to himself, that
the stranger seemed to glide, across the waste of waters, more like a
body floating in the air, than a ship resorting to the ordinary
expedients of mariners.
Mrs Wyllys and her charge had, by this time, retired to their cabin;
the former secretly felicitating herself on the prospect of soon
quitting a vessel that had commenced its voyage under such sinister
circumstances as to have deranged the equilibrium of even her
well-governed and highly-disciplined mind. Gertrude was left in
ignorance of the change. To her uninstructed eye, all appeared the same
on the wilderness of the ocean; Wilder having it in his power to alter
the direction of his vessel as often as he pleased, without his fairer
and more youthful passenger being any the wiser for the same.
Not so, however, with the intelligent Commander of the “Caroline”
himself. To him there was neither obscurity nor doubt, in the midst of
his midnight path. His eye had long been familiar with every star that
rose from out the waving bed of the sea, to set in another dark and
ragged outline of the element; nor was there a blast, that swept across
the ocean, that his burning cheek could not tell from what quarter of
the heavens it poured out its power. He knew, and understood, each
inclination made by the bows of his ship; his mind kept even pace with
her windings and turnings, in all her trackless wanderings; and he had
little need to consult any of the accessories of his art, to tell him
what course to steer, or in what manner to guide the movements of the
nice machine he governed. Still was he unable to explain the
extraordinary evolutions of the stranger. His smallest change seemed
rather anticipated than followed; and his hopes of eluding a vigilance,
that proved so watchful, was baffled by a facility of manoeuvring, and
a superiority of sailing, that really began to assume, even to his
intelligent eyes, the appearance of some unaccountable agency.
While our adventurer was engaged in the gloomy musings that such
impressions were not ill adapted to excite, the heavens and the sea
began to exhibit another aspect. The bright streak which had so long
hung along the eastern horizon, as though the curtain of the firmament
had been slightly opened to admit a passage for the winds, was now
suddenly closed; and heavy masses of black clouds began to gather in
that quarter, until vast volumes of the vapour were piled upon the
water, blending the two elements in one. On the other hand, the dark
canopy lifted in the west, and a long belt of lurid light was shed over
the view. In this flood of bright and portentous mist the stranger
still floated, though there were moments when his faint and fanciful
outlines seemed to be melting into thin air.