"Why don't the lubbers take some canvas off her?" exclaimed one.
"Or heave her in the wind?" added another.
"There's the jib-sheet let fly: down royals and in topgallant-sails! Why don't you heave her in the wind? Ready your anchors!" cried Hislop loudly in his astonishment, as he shouted to those on board, and rushed mid-leg into the water. "Heavens!" he added, "she still bears on, cracking under every thing! She will be ashore in a minute, and then all her sticks will snap by the board like tobacco-pipes!"
A cry escaped us all as her flying jib-boom appeared right over a grove of little trees; then her bow touched the white sandy beach; but there was neither shock nor pause as she seemed to sail right on and inland, still careening over and still rising, falling, and heaving, as if upon the sea.
As I gazed upon her a strange and paralyzing sensation came over me, and all my faculties became frozen. The profound silence of the scene, the calm landscape of the moonlit isle, and the noiselessness of the ocean, made us stare at her and at each other as men in a trance. My breath became suspended, my heart seemed to stand still in all its pulses, while this mysterious—this most spectral ship—passed before us like a living thing, and then melted away in the moonshine, apparently right under the cliff of Antonio, leaving us to gaze at each other, in doubt as to whether we were mad or not.
Hislop was the first to recover himself, and striking his hands together, with the air of one to whose astonishment had succeeded the bitterness of a deep disappointment, he exclaimed,—
"It is only the phenomenon called Fata Morgana!"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MAROONED.
It is impossible for me to describe the blank astonishment, or rather the intense consternation, of our men on the disappearance of this vessel, which was the object of so many hopes and wishes.