A SQUALL
DECEMBER 21.--No further disturbance has taken place among the men. For
a few hours the fish appeared again, and we caught a great many of
them, and stored them away in an empty barrel. This addition to our
stock of provisions makes us hope that food, at least, will not fail us.
Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but to-day, as the evening
drew on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained
stifling and oppressive, while heavy masses of vapor hung over the
water.
There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in
the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling
flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illuminated the
horizon far and wide. There was, however, no answering roll of thunder,
and the silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful.
For a couple of hours, in the vain hope of catching a breath of air,
Miss Herbey, Andre Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing
struggle of the electric vapors. The clouds appeared like embattled
turrets crested with flame, and the very sailors, coarse-minded men as
they were, seemed struck with the grandeur of the spectacle, and
regarded attentively, though with an anxious eye, the preliminary
tokens of a coming storm. Until midnight we kept our seats upon the
stern of the raft, while the lightning ever and again shed around us a
livid glare similar to that produced by adding salt to lighted alcohol.
"Are you afraid of a storm. Miss Herbey?" said Andre to the girl.
"No, Mr. Andre, my feelings are always rather those of awe than of
fear," she replied. "I consider a storm one of the sublimest phenomena
that we can behold--don't you think so too?"
"Yes, and especially when the thunder is pealing," he said; "that
majestic rolling, far different to the sharp crash of artillery, rises
and falls like the long-drawn notes of the grandest music, and I can
safely say that the tones of the most accomplished artiste have never
moved me like that incomparable voice of nature."
"Rather a deep bass, though," I said, laughing.
"That may be," he answered; "but I wish we might hear it now, for this
silent lightning is somewhat unexpressive."
"Never mind that, Andre," I said; "enjoy a storm when it comes, if you
like, but pray don't wish for it."
"And why not?" said he; "a storm will bring us wind, you know."
"And water, too," added Miss Herbey, "the water of which we are so
seriously in need."
The young people evidently wished to regard the storm from their own
point of view, and although I could have opposed plenty of common sense
to their poetical sentiments, I said no more, but let them talk on as
they pleased for fully an hour.
Meanwhile the sky was becoming quite over-clouded, and after the
zodiacal constellations had disappeared in the mists that hung round
the horizon, one by one the stars above our heads were veiled in dark
rolling masses of vapor, from which every instant there issued forth
sheets of electricity that formed a vivid background to the dark gray
fragments of cloud that floated beneath.
Sleep, even if we wished it, would have been impossible in that
stifling temperature. The lightning increased in brilliancy and
appeared from all quarters of the horizon, each flash covering large
arcs, varying from 100 deg. to 150 deg., leaving the atmosphere
pervaded by one incessant phosphorescent glow.
The thunder became at length more and more distinct, the reports, if I
may use the expression, being "round," rather than rolling. It seemed
almost as though the sky were padded with heavy clouds of which the
elasticity muffled the sound of the electric bursts.
Hitherto, the sea had been calm, almost stagnant as a pond. Now,
however, long undulations took place, which the sailors recognized, all
too well, as being the rebound produced by a distant tempest. A ship,
in such a case, would have been instantly brought ahull, but no
maneuvering could be applied to our raft, which could only drift before
the blast.
At one o'clock in the morning one vivid flash, followed, after the
interval of a few seconds, by a loud report of thunder, announced that
the storm was rapidly approaching. Suddenly the horizon was enveloped
in a vaporous fog, and seemed to contract until it was close around us.
At the same instant the voice of one of the sailors was heard shouting:
"A squall! a squall!"