Chapter Eighteen.
Anxious times.
As the minutes glided by in the midst of that profound silence, a fresh kind of feverish feeling began to steal over Fitz. There in the distance, apparently beyond the dome of great stars which lit up the blackish purple heavens, was the dull glowing cloud which looked like one that the sunset had left behind; beneath that were the twinkling lights of the town, and between the schooner and that, a broad black plain of darkness, looking like a layer which extended as high as the top of the masts.
But as Fitz looked down, it was to see that the blackness below his feet was transparent and all in motion with tiny glowing specks gliding here and there as if being swept along by a powerful current.
There were moments when he could have fancied that he was gazing into a huge black mirror which reflected the vast dome of stars, but he knew by experience that these moving greenish golden specks were no orbs of light but the tiny phosphorescent medusas gliding in all directions through the transparent water, and every now and then combining to emit a pale green bluish flash of light, as some fish made the current swirl by giving a swoop with its tail.
Moment by moment in the silence all seemed to grow more and more unreal, more dream-like, till he felt ready to declare that all was fancy, that he had heard no splash of a coming boat, and that the next minute he would start into wakefulness and find that it was all imagination.
Then all at once he was listening with every nerve on the strain, wishing that he knew Spanish instead of Latin, for a low clear voice arose out of the darkness, saying, as he afterwards learned—
“Aboard the English vessel there! Where are you? I have lost my way.”