One mass of these clouds the two persons we have introduced continued to watch for some time. At first it had attracted their attention by its striking similarity to Gibraltar, as it stretched darkly along the horizon, like a colossal sleeping lion. Gradually the vapors spread horizontally, and became almost shapeless. Then, suddenly, they assumed form again, and there, plain to even the most unimaginative, was an old woman in a short-gown, with one foot angrily uplifted, a pipe in her mouth, and the most grotesque of all caps upon her head.
A light, silvery laugh broke from the young girl, and clapping her hands, gleefully, she cried,
“Aunt, aunt, see!”
Even the stately dame smiled, but only for a moment, when she looked more prim than ever, as if fearing she had lowered her dignity.
“The moon will rise directly,” she said, crossing to the opposite side of the ship, whither her niece soon followed her.
In the eastern sky, the clouds were now of the richest amber, while under them the ocean was suffused with a delicate rosy hue. These tints slowly faded from both the firmament and sea, and darkness began to accumulate upon the prospect. In the course of a quarter of an hour, night had settled down. And now there appeared above a bank of cloud, that lay like a range of dark hills on the seaboard, the upper edge of the moon’s disc. Instantaneously a bit of moonlight glimmered on the waters close under the side of the ship. As the planet gradually rose from behind the cloud, like some huge burnished ball of copper, the line of light extended itself to the eastern horizon, a tremulous bridge of silver.
It was but a little while, however, that the bright orb shone unclouded. The whole firmament, indeed, was fast becoming flecked by vapory masses: and one of these soon floated between the moon and the spectators. In a few moments the planet was entirely concealed. But far away, almost on the utmost verge of the horizon, her light, still shining from behind the cloud, lay on the waters beneath, like a silver lake on a blue and solitary plain. Gradually this began to contract, lessening and lessening until it seemed a mere thread of light along the seaboard; and then a low, white sand-bank: after which it vanished altogether. Simultaneously the upper edge of the obscuring cloud showed a faint pearly lining, which the instant after brightened into silver. Soon the tip of the moon’s disc appeared; and once more the waves beneath the spectators began to glitter with the planet’s wake, which directly bridged the undulating deep again; the crests of the dark waves, and even their higher sides, sparkling and shining as if discharging electricity.
“It is like a scene in the Arabian Nights,” enthusiastically exclaimed the younger female. “But see,” she added, shortly after, “see again!” The animated speaker caught her aunt’s arm, as she spoke, while she pointed to a new variation in the brilliant scene before them.
Another cloud was now approaching the moon, and in such a way, that its shadow fell like a bridge of ebony, right across her wake. In a few minutes, the planet had vanished a second time; a second time the lake of silver shone on the far-off plain of blue; the white coast-line followed; the momentary darkness recurred again; and the moon again emerging, walked up the firmament, in cloudless majesty, like some majestic, white-robed virgin.
For nearly an hour the two females remained watching the changes of this lovely night. Not the least beautiful spectacle were the moonbeams shining on the snowy sails, which rose above the beholders, cloud on cloud, until the upper ones almost seemed lost in the sky. The single star still twinkled over head, swinging backwards and forwards past the mainmast, as the ship careened and rose in the freshening breeze.