MY FORTUNE
The gipsy woman stooped and stared at me. Her face was close to mine,
I seemed to feel her hot breath and shrunk in my chair. Never can I
forget those eyes of hers. To this day do they revisit me in my sleep
and glare upon me in dreams. Oh, such eyes as that woman had! The
pupils were like liquid indigo; they contracted and enlarged as though
they were fluid, indeed, upon the orange ground of the balls. They
seemed on fire as their gaze flashed deep and full into my own vision.
The scrutiny swiftly grew intolerable and I dropped my veil.
‘That will do, my sweet lady,’ said she, preserving the horrid whining
note in her voice, and then, taking my hand, she feigned to explore it
for some moments, perhaps minutes, so long did the pause seem.
She stood with my fingers in her hand, poring upon the palm. I cast
a look around me, and in spite of my nervousness and uneasiness,
that amounted to positive distress, I had some difficulty to prevent
myself from breaking into an hysterical laugh at the countenances
which surrounded us. Mrs. Webber seemed unable to draw her breath; the
Miss Glanvilles stood with their mouths partly open; Sir Frederick
Thompson’s face was distorted by a grin of expectation; but it would
need the brush of a great comic artist to reproduce the looks of those
people whilst they waited for the gipsy to speak.
She suddenly let fall my hand, drew herself erect and receded a step,
causing a momentary confusion amongst the passengers who stood
immediately behind her. She muttered awhile, and then in a sort of
singsong, drawling voice addressed me, as nearly as I can recollect, as
follows:--
‘It is not true that you are a single woman as they are saying
throughout this ship. It is nothing to me that you have no wedding
ring, for what signifies the want of a wedding ring when a poor lady is
found as you were, bleeding and insensible? What signifies a wedding
ring, I say, to such as you, found as you were, my sorrowful lady?--for
are there not thieves upon the sea as there are thieves upon the land?
And I do not need to be told that a sailor may be a good man until he
is tempted, and then he will turn thief; yes, he will turn thief, even
though he would give all that he has stolen for a drink of water and a
piece of biscuit.’
‘How extraordinary!’ I heard Mrs. Webber say.
‘Oh yes,’ continued the gipsy, slightly gesticulating with her right
hand, ‘the wedding ring does not signify. You are a married woman. I
have looked into your eyes and I have seen a husband there; I have
looked into your eyes and I have seen children there. You are a married
woman, my lady. I tell you that, and I will tell you more; you are a
young married woman. You have not long been married. Your husband is
mourning for you, but he will not mourn long. Give me your hand.’ She
seized my hand with impassioned energy, and continued to speak with
her eyes fixed upon the palm of it. ‘You will be long separated from
your husband. A dark shadow will stand between you. Oh, it is very
clear--here is the sign: it is the shadow of death, that will stand
between you. It will roll away, but another shadow of death will take
its place, and though it will not stand between you and your husband,
it will be dark upon your soul, aye, even unto the grave.’
‘The woman certainly talks poetically,’ said Mrs. Lee, in a low voice
in my ear, ‘and it is clever of her to say what it has not occurred to
other people to think of.’
The gipsy viewed me with her bright eyes and her teeth bared, but
apparently she had no more fortune to tell me.
‘I say, missis,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson, ‘I should like to
have your opinion upon the lady’s quality. If she ain’t a titled woman,
don’t she spring from a noble stock now?’
‘Ah, my pretty gentleman,’ whined the gipsy turning to view him, ‘The
duckkerin dook does not tell me that.’
‘You’ve told fortunes enough in your time to be able to tell breeding,
I hope, when you see it,’ said Sir Frederick.
‘Oh, my pretty gentleman,’ drawled the woman, ‘to us poor gipsies all
the world is alike. We are all brothers and sisters, and those that are
kind,’ said she, bobbing a curtsey at him, ‘we love best and think most
of, and they are the true quality people of the earth.’
‘But you have not done with the lady yet, I hope?’ cried Mrs. Webber.
‘You have told her nothing.’
‘My gorgeous angel,’ answered the woman, ‘I have told the sorrowful
lady all I know, and what I know is the truth.’
‘What’s her country, mother?’ inquired Mr. Stinton.
She eyed him sideways with a cat-like look, but made no reply.
‘Tell us, my good woman, in what country you think her home is?’ said
Mr. Webber.
‘Who can tell? I will not answer that,’ said the gipsy. ‘There are many
countries for the likes of such as the sorrowful lady to have a home
in. There is Russia and Spain and ’Olland. In them countries are plenty
of English gorgios. Where her home may be I cannot tell, for the dook
is silent.’
‘What Dook is she talking of?’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson.
‘Oh, sweet gentleman,’ she said, turning upon him again, ‘the dook is
the spirit that enables me to tell dukkeripen.’
‘Hearing you speak of Spain, mother, I thought you might have meant the
Dook of Wellington,’ said Sir Frederick.
Mrs. Webber looked at her husband with a face of vexation, as though
irritated by the vulgar jokes of the little city gentleman at such a
moment of romance.
‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of riddles if he cannot tell us
why the lady should be found insensible and washing about the ocean in
a little bit of an open boat,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a
guess?’
‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling means reading the
future, not the past,’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’ cried the gipsy; ‘but I have
told the sorrowful lady her past too, and by-and-bye the dook may tell
me what her name is and where her ’ome is, and how many childer she
has; and if I enable her to return to her friends, I hope,’ said she,
sinking her knees in a curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be
remembered.’
Captain Ladmore, who had been looking on and listening all this while,
stalked away from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained there,
gazing seawards.
‘And shall I tell you your fortune, my sweet young lady?’ exclaimed the
gipsy, addressing Alice Lee. ‘Give me your poor thin hand, and though
you cross mine with the littlest bit you have, you shall have your
fortune as truly told as though you gave me gold.’
‘My daughter does not require her fortune told,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee,
jumping up with an air of mingled consternation and excitement, and
planting herself between the gipsy and Alice.
‘I think we have had about enough of her for one watch,’ exclaimed Mr.
Harris, in his sourest voice. ‘Suppose you go forward now.’
‘Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman,’ exclaimed the
gipsy; ‘you are an officer of the ship, and I will tell you your
fortune for nothing.’
‘Get along forward to your quarters,’ said Mr. Harris. ‘When I want
lies told about me I’ll get ’em from somebody who’ll have sense enough
to fit my tiptop wishes. What can ye tell me? That after this voyage
I’m going to marry a German princess and be voted ten thousand a year
by the British House of Commons? You’d want sixpence to tell me that
lie, and there’s never a man for’ards that wouldn’t spin me fifty
better yarns about my prospects for a single tot of grog. So away
with you to your quarters,’ and he made as though he would drive her;
whereupon, dropping curtsies to me, to Mrs. Webber, and to one or two
others, the gipsy walked forward with a face rendered extraordinary by
the wild grin on her lips and the scowl upon her brow like a visible
shadow there, sharpening and brightening the fiery glancings of her
eyes.
The crowds of emigrants on the two ladders melted away, the mob of
passengers broke up, but Mrs. Webber remained.
Mrs. Webber, as I have said, remained; but for some moments neither she
nor Mrs. Lee nor her daughter spoke. Their eyes were bent upon my face,
and they waited, hoping no doubt that when I aroused myself from the
reverie into which I had sunk I would exhibit some sign of returning
memory. I held my head down, and kept my gaze fixed upon the deck, and,
rightly guessing that I would not be the first to speak, Mrs. Webber
said:
‘Tell me now, has the gipsy woman helped you at all?’
I looked at her, and after a pause shook my head and answered, ‘She has
not helped me in the least.’
‘What could have put the idea of your being married into the creature’s
head?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
‘It is a strange idea,’ said Alice, looking at me earnestly; ‘but
I suppose those gipsy people understand the need of saying strange
things. They cannot be too dark and mysterious and startling to please
the sort of folks who cross their hands.’
‘But why should not Miss C---- be married?’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘I hope she is not--but I am _sure_ she is not!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
Mrs. Webber ran a curious eye over me, and said: ‘I had my theory, but
I own the gipsy creature has driven it out of my head. Is it _quite_
impossible, my dear Mrs. Lee, that Miss C---- may have been robbed of
her rings? Why should she be found without any jewellery upon her? Your
station in society is easily guessed, Miss C----, and I must say, now
the gipsy woman has suggested the idea, that your having been found
without rings, without a watch and chain, without earrings or brooch,
without, in short, a single ornament such as one might most reasonably
expect to find a lady wearing, looks uncommonly like as though you had
been robbed. In which case,’ she added, somewhat breathlessly, ‘you
_may_ have worn a wedding ring.’
‘Miss C---- had a purse with money in it in her pocket,’ said Mrs. Lee,
who never called me by the name her daughter had given to me before
strangers. ‘A thief who would steal rings or a watch and chain would
certainly steal a purse with money in it.’
‘But--forgive me for being candid, Miss C----; whatever I say, whatever
I may say, is _wholly_ for your sake--is wholly with the idea of
helping you to remember,’ said Mrs. Webber; ‘is it likely that a lady
occupying your position in society would be without a single ring?’ She
glanced at her own plump white hands, upon which sparkled a variety of
valuable gems.
Alice Lee pulled off her silk gloves, and, lifting up her poor thin
hands, exclaimed with a smile in her voice--her face was concealed by
her veil--‘You may see, Mrs. Webber, that I do not wear rings.’
‘There may be a reason,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber, looking a little
nonplussed.
‘Yes, there is a reason to be sure,’ said Mrs. Lee, bringing her eyes
away from her daughter’s hands with a look of pain in her face, ‘Alice
never cared for jewellery of any sort.’
‘I could name two girls of my acquaintance, Mrs. Webber,’ said Alice,
putting on her gloves, ‘who do not wear rings, not because they cannot
get them, their fathers are rich merchants at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but
because, like me, they do not care for rings. I dare say we could name
others, mother, if we were to take the trouble to think.’
‘But would you be without a watch, Miss C----?’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘Do not ask me!’ I cried. ‘All the while you are conversing I am
struggling with my mind.’
‘Take a few turns with me, dear,’ said Alice, rising, ‘and then we will
go downstairs and lunch together quietly in our cabin. I do not feel
well enough to lunch in the saloon.’
So I gave her my arm, and we paced the deck. Mrs. Webber took my
chair and talked with Mrs. Lee in a voice which she softened as we
approached, gesticulating with considerable energy, as though she
sought to convince her companion. After we had taken four or five
turns, Alice complained of feeling weary; we then descended into the
saloon and passed into the cabin.
* * * * *
At about nine o’clock that evening I went to my berth in the steerage,
having spent the greater part of the day since the hour of lunch
with Alice Lee and her mother. The girl’s cough had been somewhat
troublesome during the afternoon. It had abated, but it had left her
weak, and there had been a hint of querulousness in her manner, but
scarcely so much as to vex her sweetness; nay, I could liken it to
nothing better than to the passage of a summer breath of night-wind
over some exquisitely calm breast of water, causing the reflection of
the stars to tremble in the pure mirror, and shaking a little further
sweetness yet out of the lilies.
I helped her to undress, and saw her into bed, and I sat and read
aloud to her until she fell asleep. Her mother had sat in an armchair
watching her, until some one began to play on the piano, whilst I was
reading to Alice, on which Mrs. Lee softly went out to silence the
music, as I might suppose, for it presently ceased, and before she
returned Alice had fallen asleep; whereupon, creeping from the berth, I
whispered to Mrs. Lee that her daughter slumbered, and went to my own
cabin.
The bracket lamp was alight, but it burnt dimly, and I brightened it
for the sake of the cheerfulness and the companionship of the flame. I
was sad at heart, and my head ached, but I was not sleepy. Secretly I
had been greatly agitated by what the gipsy had said. Of course I knew
it was pure invention on the woman’s part; but even as mere suggestions
her words had sunk deep. Could it be that I was a married woman? Could
it be that I had children? The thought raised an agony of desire to
_know_--to be _sure_; but it brought with it no other yearning. I
knew not that there were dear ones at home mourning over me as dead,
and therefore my heart could not crave for them. To my eclipsed and
blackened mind my husband and my children were as the unborn infant is
to the mother that may yet bear it. I was without memory and, no matter
what might be the imaginations infixed in my mind by the suggestions
and conjectures of others, I was without the power to realise.
But not the less was the struggle after recollection a dreadful
anguish. Sometimes I sat and sometimes I paced the deck of the cabin,
and all the while I was saying to myself, ‘Suppose that I am a wife!
Suppose that I have left a husband and children behind me at my home,
wherever it may be!’ And then I would come to a stand, and fold my
arms tightly across my breast, and close my eyes and with knitted brow
search in the blackness within me, till the fruitless quest grew into
physical pain unendurable as though some cruel hand were upon my heart.
And there was something more than my own intolerable mental condition
to depress me. I could not doubt that Alice Lee was dying. She might
be spared for some weeks; she might even be spared to find a grave
in Australia. But when I had looked at her after her fits of coughing
that afternoon, and when I had taken a final glance at her as she lay
sleeping, I could not doubt that her time was short, that whether or
not she should live to reach Australia she would certainly never behold
her native country again. Short as had been our association, I could
not have loved her more had she been known to me and had she been dear
to me all her life. I loved Mrs. Lee, but I loved Alice Lee more than I
loved her mother. My grief was selfish, but then all grief is more or
less so. When this girl dies, I thought to myself, what friends shall I
have? Who will compassionate my loneliness as she does? Who will make
me feel as she does, whilst my memory remains black, that I am not
utterly solitary? I know that whilst she lives I shall have a friend,
someone who will care for me, someone who will not lose sight of me
when this voyage is ended and the homeless world is before me. But she
will die before the voyage is ended, and what then will become of me?
O God, take pity upon me! I cried out of the anguish of my soul; and,
throwing myself upon my knees, I clasped my hands and prayed for mercy
and for help to Him to whom Alice Lee had taught me to pray.
The night was very quiet. The steerage was silent; one man I had
observed reading at a table under the lamp; but the fine night, as I
might suppose, detained his fellow-passengers on deck. There was a
bright moon; the silver sheen lay upon the glass of the cabin porthole
and so obscured it with misty radiance that the stars and the dark
line of the horizon were invisible. The wind was fair and fresh, and
the noise of the water washing past penetrated the silence. The ship
rocked stately and slow; indeed it was true tropic sailing, with a
tropic temperature in the cabin and a tropic night without, to judge by
the glory of the moonlight upon the cabin window.
The minutes crept on, but feeling sleepless I had no mind to undress
myself. Indeed, I had a longing to go on deck, for the temperature
of the berth was uncomfortably warm; I did not know how to open the
porthole, nor, though I had been able to open it, should I have dared
to do so lest a sudden roll of the ship might submerge the orifice and
fill the berth with water. The temptation, therefore, to go on deck was
keen, and it was rendered the keener by my hot brow and headache; in
imagination I tasted the sweet night wind cool with dew, and beheld the
wide-spread splendour cast by the moon upon the vast dark surface of
the sea. But then it would shortly be ten o’clock, at which hour a man
regularly tapped upon my door and bade me extinguish my lamp; and then,
again, I remembered how Mr. Harris and Mrs. Richards had stated that it
was against the rules of the ship for women to wander alone upon the
decks after the hour for extinguishing the lights had been struck upon
the ship’s bell.
Suddenly I heard a voice calling down the hatchway at the forward end
of the steerage; someone gruffly replied, possibly the man who had been
seated reading under the lamp. I paid no heed to these cries; they were
frequent enough down in this part of the ship. But about five minutes
after the cry had sounded my cabin door was lightly beaten and opened,
and Mrs. Richards entered.
‘I am glad to find you dressed,’ she exclaimed. ‘I believed you would
have been in bed in spite of your light burning. There is a fine sight
to be seen on deck. What do you think it is? A ship on fire! You may
make many voyages without seeing such a sight.’
‘A ship on fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, I should greatly wish to see it!
But it is nearly ten o’clock.’
‘And what of that?’ said she.
‘Why, did I not understand you to say that women are not allowed to be
alone on deck after the lights are out?’
She laughed and answered, ‘The Captain would not like women to be
wandering on deck alone at one o’clock in the morning as you were, my
dear; but there are always passengers about in warm weather at ten
o’clock, and sometimes after midnight, and whilst there are passengers
on deck no notice will be taken of your being there.’
‘If I had known that,’ said I, ‘I should have gone on deck half an hour
ago.’
I put on my shawl and hat--I call them mine--and, parting with Mrs.
Richards at her own cabin door, went on to the poop by one of the
ladders conducting to that raised platform from the quarter deck. It
was a very fine glorious night. The moon rode high, and under her the
sea lay brightly silvered. The sky was rich with stars, some of them
a delicate green and two or three of them rose, and the firmament in
which they sparkled had a soft and flowing look as though the velvet
dusk were liquid. The ship was clothed with canvas to the starry
altitude of her trucks. The swelling sails reflected the light of the
moon, and their gleam was as that of snow against the dark sky as they
rose with an appearance of cloud-like floating one above another,
dwindling until the topmost sail seemed no more than a fragment of
fleecy mist wan in the dusky heights. There was a pleasant breeze, and
it blew over the rail cool with dew and sweet with that flavourless
freshness of ocean air that is to the nostrils as a glass of water from
a pure crystal spring is to the mouth.
I stood at the corner of the poop near the head of the ladder in
the shadow made by the great sail called the mainsail, one wing or
extremity of which was stretched a long way beyond the shrouds. Many
passengers were on the poop; they were whitened by the moonlight, and
as they moved here and there their figures showed as though beheld
through a very delicate silver mist, but their shadows swayed black and
firm from their feet upon the white planks. The forecastle of the ship
was crowded with emigrants. The moonshine was raining down in silver
upon that part of the vessel, and the people had a ghostly appearance,
every face whitened, and their clothes white as though they had been
powdered, as they stood staring across the dark sweep of sea upon the
right-hand bow of the ship.
Woman-like I gazed everywhere but in the right direction when I first
gained the poop; but, observing some people on the other side of the
deck to point with shadowy hands, I immediately beheld what resembled
a globe of red fire upon the sea. It looked like a huge star setting
red as blood. I could not imagine how far off it might be, nor, but for
the stewardess’s information, should I have supposed it to be a ship on
fire. I had expected to see a great conflagration, a wide space of the
night sky crimsoned with forked and writhing tongues of flame, and I
was disappointed; but after I had stood gazing for a few minutes alone,
for there was nobody in that corner of the deck where I had planted
myself, a feeling of dismay, of consternation, even of horror possessed
me. I knew that the dark red globe burning upon the sea yonder was a
ship on fire, and knowing this I imagined that there might be living
people on board of the flaming mass. The whole spirit of the solitude
of this mighty scene of night, beautiful as it was with moonlight and
with starlight, seemed to be centred in that distant point of fire;
and the thought of the helplessness of the people on board the flaming
fabric amid so vast a field, their horrible loneliness, the awful
despair which that loneliness must excite--this thought, and other
thoughts which visited me from that distant mass of fire, presently
grew so insupportable to the deep melancholy which was upon me and
which had been upon me throughout the evening that I crossed the deck
in the hope of finding Mrs. Lee, that I might forget something of
myself in conversing with her.
But Mrs. Lee was not to be seen. She was in her berth, probably in bed,
and they would not give her the news of the ship on fire for fear
of disturbing her daughter. The passengers stood in groups, pointing
to the burning vessel and speaking in tones of excitement. I went
from one to another, gazing into their faces and receiving nods and
enquiries as to what I thought of the ship on fire. Captain Ladmore
walked the hinder part of the deck alone. But as there was nobody near
him who resembled Mrs. Lee, I returned to that part of the deck where
I had first stationed myself, being in no humour to mingle with the
passengers on the other side.
The sea was smooth, the wind fair and fresh, the spread of canvas
vast, and the ship was sweeping through the water at a rapid rate. She
was going through it clean as a sharp-built yacht would, making no
noise save under the bows, whence arose a sound of shearing as though
produced by a knife passing through thin ice. The marbled waters, moon
touched, whirled past alongside, softly hissing as they fled by, and
from the flight of those glimmering wreaths and eddies of foam I judged
of the fast pace at which the ship was sailing.
Gradually the distant globe of fire enlarged, and now the sky was
reddened all about it, and as I gazed there stole out of the blood red
haze of light the dark shadow of a ship lying within a quarter of a
mile of the burning vessel. Mr. Harris, who stood near some passengers
on the opposite side of the deck, let fall a night-glass that he had
been holding to his eyes and called out to the captain,
‘There’s a barque hove to close alongside of the burning vessel, sir.’
‘I see her, sir,’ answered the captain; and in a few moments the
palpitating fiery mass upon the sea slided a little away from the
bow. I was sailor enough to understand that our ship had been steered
for the burning vessel, but that Captain Ladmore, now perceiving that
assistance was close at hand, had resumed his course. Every five
minutes of sailing was rendering that picture of fire more splendid
and awful. She seemed a large ship, three-masted like our own. Great
columns of smoke rose from her, and into these sooty volumes the
flames would leap out of the burning hold, turning them crimson to a
great height, and the smoke hung like a thunder-cloud over the sea
where the ship lay burning; it eclipsed the stars, and it reverberated
in lightning-like flashes the darting of the red flames; and so
exactly did these flames resemble lightning that I heard some of the
passengers, who believed the cloud of smoke to be an electric storm,
express surprise that no thunder was to be heard.
But the sublimity of the scene lay chiefly in the effect of contrast.
In one part of the ocean was the silver reflection of the moon, with
the bright, serene orb poised high and small over her own wake; the
dark waters streamed into that brilliant reflection which trembled
with the racing of the silver lines; and in another part of the ocean
lay the great flaming ship, with her masts and yards all on fire, and
showing as though they were painted upon the darkness in flames; and
a little distance from her hung the shadow of a large vessel, whose
canvas stole out in spaces of dim red, and then darkened again as the
flames soared and sank; and behind and over the mastheads of the two
vessels floated a huge dark body of smoke, which came and went to the
eye with its sudden sullen colouring as from lightning; and the whole
picture was made awful by its suggestions of terror and of destruction.
It was a scene to hold the most thoughtless mute and to detain the most
wandering eye. But whilst I stood gazing two figures drew near; as they
approached I could hear they were arguing.
‘You can never persuade me,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that the Americans have
humour in the true meaning of the word, and there is but one meaning.
They are funny, but they are not humorous. Their fun is either purely
verbal or ridiculous exaggeration.’
‘What humourist have we ever produced,’ exclaimed Mr. Clack, ‘who can
compare with ----’ and he named a funny American writer.
Mr. Wedmold’s silence was expressive of disgust.
‘Or take Holmes,’ said Mr. Clack.
‘Holmes’s humour is entirely English,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘by mentioning
Holmes you strengthen my argument.’
‘What do you mean by verbal humour?’ said Mr. Clack.
‘The Yankee gets his grins out of odd words, some few of which still
survive in our kitchens,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘or he gets his grins out
of exaggerating or understating a situation. He will tell you, for
instance, that, two men falling out, one threw the other over Niagara
Falls, and the fellow got wet. The Yankee will look for a loud laugh at
_got wet_; but there is no humour in it. A Yankee in telling a story
will wind up by saying “So I said you git, and he got.” The laugh must
come in here, for this “git” and “got” is the point of the story. But
this sort of thing--and American humour is all this sort of thing--is
by no means humour, and very little indeed of it is even fun. One
page of Elia is worth the productions of the whole of the American
humourists put together, from the date of Bunker’s Hill down to the
latest effort of ----,’ and he again mentioned the name of a funny
American writer.
I walked away and took up a position on the deck where I was unable
to hear this argument on American humour, and where I could watch the
burning ship in peace.
Very suddenly the great blaze upon the sea vanished. My eyes were upon
the strong wild light when it went out, and I noticed that just before
it disappeared the flaming masts of the vessel reeled so as to form a
fiery arc, and then all was blackness where the light had been; whence
it was to be supposed that the ship, in filling with water, had heeled
over, and gone down like a stone. The vessel that hung near showed now
very distinctly by the moonlight, and immediately over the spot where
the burning ship had foundered, hung a great dim white cloud, which
reflected the moonbeams as a cobweb might; but as I gazed this immense
body of steam melted away, and nothing was to be seen but the pallid
sails of the befriending vessel showing out against the dark cloud of
smoke.