A dark night also affords a scene to gratify curiosity and charm the eye. A few nights since, an exclamation of surprise from one of the passengers called me from my writing to the deck. As, on emerging from the cabin, I mechanically cast my eyes over the sea, I observed that at first it had the appearance of reflecting the stars from its bosom in the most dazzling splendour, but on looking upward to gaze upon the original founts of this apparently reflected light, my eyes met only a gloomy vault of clouds unillumined by a solitary star. The "scud" flew wildly over its face and the heavens were growing black with a gathering tempest. Yet beneath, the sea glittered like a "lake of fire." The crests of the vast billows as they burst high in the air, descended in showers of scintillations. The ship scattered broken light from her bows, as though a pavement of mirrors had been shivered in her pathway. Her track was marked by a long luminous train, not unlike the tail of a comet, while gleams of light like lighted lamps floating upon the water, whirled and flashed here and there in the wild eddies of her wake. The spray which was flung over the bows glittered like a sprinkling of diamonds as it fell upon the decks, where, as it flowed around the feet, it sparkled for some seconds with innumerable shining specks. And so intense was the light shining from the sea that I was enabled to read with ease the fine print of a newspaper. A bucket plunged into the sea, which whitened like shivered ice, on its striking it, was drawn up full of glittering sea-water that sparkled for more than a minute, after being poured over the deck, and then gradually losing its lustre, finally disappeared in total darkness.
Many hypotheses have been suggested by scientific men to account for this natural phenomenon. "Some have regarded it," says Dr. Coates, "as the effect of electricity, produced by the friction of the waves; others as the product of a species of fermentation in the water, occurring accidentally in certain places. Many have attributed it to the well-known phosphorescence of putrid fish, or to the decomposition of their slime and exuviæ, and a few only to the real cause, the voluntary illumination of many distinct species of marine animals.
"The purpose for which this phosphorescence is designed is lost in conjecture; but when we recollect that fish are attracted to the net by the lights of the fisherman, and that many of the marine shellfish are said to leave their native element to crawl around a fire built upon the beach, are we not warranted in supposing that the animals of which we have been speaking, are provided with these luminous properties, in order to entice their prey within their grasp?"
IV.
Land—Abaco—Fleet—Hole in the Wall—A wrecker's hut—Bahama vampyres—Light houses—Conspiracy—Wall of Abaco—Natural Bridge—Cause—Night scene—Speak a packet ship—A floating city—Wrecker's lugger—Signal of distress—A Yankee lumber brig—Portuguese Man-of-War.
"Land ho!" shouted a voice both loud and long, apparently from the clouds, just as we had comfortably laid ourselves out yesterday afternoon for our customary siesta.
"Where away?" shouted the captain, springing to the deck, but not so fast as to prevent our tumbling over him, in the head-and-heels projection of our bodies up the companion-way, in our eagerness to catch a glimpse, once more, of the grassy earth; of something at least stationary.
"Three points off the weather bow," replied the man aloft.