To-night the moon had sunk early in a purple-blue haze—a new moon it was, and looked through the mist like a Turkish scimitar wet with blood. The stars had been bright for a short time afterwards. But the wind rose roaring from the east, driving great dark clouds before it, that soon swallowed everything else up. Then it was night in earnest.
Whoo—oo—oo! What a mournful sound it was, to be sure! You might have imagined that wild wolves were howling round the house, and stranger voices still rising high over the din of the raging storm.
Whoo—oo—oo!
“What a fearful night!” said Mrs. Talisker.
“Ay, sister,” said Uncle Robert; “it is blowing half a gale outside to-night, I’ll warrant, and may be more.”
By “outside” he did not mean out of doors simply. It is a sailor’s expression, and refers to the sea away beyond the harbour-mouth.
“It was on just such a night as this, sister, though not on such a cold sea as that which is sweeping over our beach to-night, that the Southern Hope was lost on the shores of Ecuador. Heigho-ho! My dear friend Captain Herbert has never been the same man since.
“And do you know, my dear, it happened exactly six years ago this very night.”
“How very strange!” said Tommy’s mother.
“Strange, my dear? Not a bit of it. What is strange, and how should it be strange—eh?”