“All hands, shorten sail!” sang out Hawsepipe.
The boatswain’s pipe sounded, his gruff voice reiterated the order, and the men, who had been grouped together on the forecastle discussing the singular appearance of the weather, sprang to their stations.
“Main and peak halliards let go! Man the main-tack tricing-line and down with the throat of the sail; round-in upon the mainsheet! Now, then, is there no one to attend to the peak downhaul? That’s right. Now roll up the sail snugly and put the coat on. In with the whole of your square canvas forward. Royal, topgallant, and topsail halliards and sheets let go; man the clewlines, and clew them up cheerily, my lads. Haul down and stow both jibs. Lay aloft there! and see that you stow your canvas snugly, although it is too dark at present for me to see what you are about.” Thus Mr Hawsepipe, in as authoritative a tone as though he were the first luff of a 120-gun ship.
Sail was shortened in considerably less time than it has taken to write the above description; for though this was the first cruise wherein Hawsepipe had been placed in a position of actual authority, he was anything but a tyro in the science of seamanship, and insisted on everything on board being done as thoroughly well as it was possible to do it, and the schooner was soon ready for whatever might come.
The night grew hotter and hotter, and still the glassy calm continued. The darkness was so intense, so opaque, that on placing my hand close before my eyes, I was quite unable to see it; and the stillness of the air was such that the flame of a lamp brought on deck burned straight up and down, merely swaying a trifle with the heave of the ship upon the long, sluggish swell.
This state of things continued until nearly four bells in the first watch, when a startling phenomenon occurred. The curtain of vapour grew more dense even than it had been before, entirely precluding the possibility of any light penetrating from above; notwithstanding which, the atmosphere very gradually became luminous with a ghastly, blue, sulphurous light, until it was possible, not only to see distinctly every object on board the schooner, but also to distinguish the gleaming surface of the water for a distance on every side of some three miles or so.
The faces of the men huddled together on the forecastle looked ghastly and death-like in this unearthly light, and the hull, spars, rigging and canvas of the schooner assumed such a weird and supernatural appearance when illumined by it, that she might easily have been mistaken for a cruiser from Phlegethon.
But this was not all. About half-an-hour after this singular luminosity of the atmosphere first became apparent, and before the startled seamen had recovered their self-possession, in an instant, without any premonition whatever, there appeared at each mast-head and yardarm, at the jibboom-end—in fact, at the end of every spar on board the schooner—a globe of greenish-coloured light, about the size of an ordinary lamp-globe, each of which wavered and swayed, elongated and flattened, as the ship gently rose and fell over the glassy sea.
The men were now thoroughly terrified.
“See that, Tom?” exclaimed one. “What d’ye call all them things?”