Susan dressed in a minute; she hurried out of the cabin and went to the well-deck with Jones.
It was about four o’clock in the morning, but there was as yet no sign of the coming day. A crescent moon was glowing above, but the light of it paled into insignificance before the radiant splendour of the morning star. There in the East hung Venus, like a great lamp illumining all heaven and earth, a diamond set against a magnificent background of millions and millions of stars. These indeed were strewn almost as thickly in the sky as sand in a desert; look where you would, you saw them, some faint, some bright, and some like silver dust scattered profusely about the lofty silent dome that overarched and covered the wide circle of the sea. The gleaming planet and scintillating sky were alone sufficient to impress those who beheld them that morning with a sense of wonder and of awe. Their serene and lofty beauty, immeasurable grandeur, and vast incalculable distance must have appealed even to the most indifferent care-blunted mind. But it was not upon these that hundreds of eyes were turned when Susan and her lover reached the starboard of the vessel, where a crowd of persons were already standing. All looked at but one object—a great band of light that streamed up from below the eastern horizon and swept across the sky to the south-west, where it dipped into the sea. Clear and distinct it shone, in spite of the radiance around it: a flaming portent, as it seemed, emerging suddenly out of the mysterious depths of space. Most of the travellers on the ship saw it for the first time that morning. They looked at it startled, and with palpitating hearts.
“The comet,” whispered Jones again, and—
“The sword of the Lord,” said calmly but distinctly an old man who stood amongst the deckers.
Almost every one talked in whispers. Something oppressed them—a vague, uncanny feeling. The women pressed their hands against their hearts.
They were alone on the sea. On land they would not have feared so much, for nearly all calamities, or imagined indications of calamity, the West Indian peasant can face with a calmness which springs from his deep-rooted fatalism. But here they were amidst surroundings strange to them; they were alone in a world which they regarded with apprehension—alone upon the sea with the sword of the Lord flaming in the heavens above them.
The sea ran swiftly, wave racing after wave, black and foam-crested. They dashed against the sides of the vessel, flinging high into the air a glistening shower of spray which fell back upon the bosom of the waters in sparks of liquid fire. The prow of the ship seemed to plunge into argent flame; in its wake writhed and twisted a long serpent of light. The phosphorescent gleams of the tropic sea flashed an answer to the brilliance of the tropic sky above, and fire seemed glancing and blazing everywhere.
The wind blew steadily from east to west, and the throbbing of the engines added to the roar of the leaping, hurrying waves. Now and again a murmuring sound was heard amongst the people on the deck—a sound as if they prayed.
Long and earnestly they gazed upon the comet; and then into Jones’s mind came the words of his friend Septimus, spoken so short a time before.
He bent down and whispered in Susan’s ear: