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“Light is amid the gloomy canvas spreading, The moon is whitening the dusky sails, From the thick bank of clouds she masters, shedding The softest influence that o’er night prevails. Pale is she, like a young queen pale with splendor, Haunted with passionate thoughts too fond, too deep; The very glory that she wears is tender, The very eyes that watch her beauty fain would weep.” |
Not a breath from the lungs of Æolus. The sun went down like a globe of fire; but just as it touched the horizon it flattened out into an oval disk, and, sinking behind a dead, slate-colored cloud, shot up half a dozen broad rose and purple bands, expanding as they mounted heavenward, and then fading away in pearly-tinted hues in the softening twilight until it mingled in the light of the half moon nearly at the zenith. There lay the island, too, now all clear again, with the blue tops of the mountains marked in pure distinct outline, and falling away from peak to peak on either hand, till the sea flashed up in sluggish creamy foam at the base. The man-of-war birds came floating in from seaward, high up, like black musquitoes, with their pointed wings wide spread and heading toward the land, but now with never a quiver to their silent pinions. A school of porpoises, too, broke water from the opposite direction, and, crossing and recrossing each other’s track, came leaping and puffing over the gentle swells until they struck the brig’s wake, when they wheeled around her bows, dashed off on a swift visit to the corvette, and then, closing up in watery phalanx, went gamboling, leaping, and breaking water again to windward. Presently, along the eastern horizon, the banks of clouds, which had been lying dead and motionless all the sultry day, seemed to be imbued with life, and, separating in their fleecy masses, mounted up above the sea, and soon spread out, like a lady’s fan, in all directions.
“Ho! ho!” shouted Captain Blunt, clapping his hands, “what said I, Madame Rosalie, when we saw the sun setting up his lee backstays a while ago? A breeze, eh? Come, Mr. Binks, be wide awake! We shall be bowling off the knots before the watch is out.”
The mate caught the enthusiasm of the skipper, and, jumping up on the break of the deck cabin, he sang out,
“D’ye hear there, lads? give us a good pull of the top-sail halliards, and round in them starboard braces a bit! That’s your sort! Well, the head-yards! That’ll do with the main! Up with the flying jib, and trim aft them starboard jib and staysail sheets! There! Belay all.”
Meanwhile the corvette, with her lofty dimity kissing the sky, caught the first light airs before the slightest ripple darkened the surface of the water; and with her helm a-starboard, and her after-yards braced sharp up, she silently swung round on her heel, while the spanker came flat aft, like a sheet of white paper, and with the head-sails trimmed, she slowly moved athwart the stern of the brig. The sharp whistles of the boatswain and his mates, piping like goldfinches, were the only sounds that were heard; and as the cruiser moved on in her course, the declining moon cast a mellow light over the folds of her canvas, and, like a girl in bridal attire, she threw a graceful shadow over the smooth and swelling waters away off to windward.
The sails of the brig, which had begun to swell out in easy drooping lines, fell back again flat to the masts as the ship crossed her wake. But as the corvette passed, the officer of the watch on the poop raised his cap to the lovely woman who was standing out in graceful relief on the upper cabin deck, with her little boy held up beside her in the sturdy arms of the black, and placing the trumpet to his lips, said, in a distinct voice, as if addressing the skipper,
“We shall go about at midnight. Remember the directions I gave you this morning. Bon voyage, madame!” He shook his trumpet playfully at the boy, who put out his chubby arms with delight to the speaker, and then hammered away with great glee on the crown of his bearer’s head.
“Thank you, sir,” said Captain Blunt, who was leaning over the rail; and then turning to his mate, he added,