"If this foul weather holds for another day," said Weston, as he trod the deck with a sulkiness quite professional under the circumstances, "we shall see land sooner than I wished."
"Land!" I reiterated, brightening at the idea more than he relished.
"Yes, some part of the Canaries—Santa Cruz de la Palma, most likely; but we shall have very rough weather before another sun rises. I know well the signs, Mr. Rodney. Don't you see what is brewing yonder, Hislop?" he said in a low voice to his mate.
"You say just what old Roberts, Tattooed Tom, and I were observing forward," replied Hislop. "We have not all of us seen a hurricane off the west coast of Africa, a tornado in the Windward Isles, and a regular roaring pampero off the Rio de la Plata, without learning something—eh, Captain?"
"I hope not; so remember that this gloomy weather, with the wind lulling away and then coming again in hot gusts with a moaning sound—in my part of England we name it 'the calling of the sea'—are always signs of a coming squall."
As the night closed in, the canvas on the brig was reduced; the royals were struck and the yards sent on deck; the dead lights were shipped on the stern windows; the quarter boat was hoisted within the taffrail, and there lashed hard and fast, for there were increasing tokens of a coming tempest, and ere midnight it came with a vengeance.
The sky at first was all a deep, dark blue, wonderfully dark for that region, and the stars, especially the planets, shone with singular clearness and beauty; but in the north-west quarter of the heavens we could see the coming blast.
From the horizon to the zenith, there arose with terrible rapidity a mighty bank of sable cloud, forming a vast and gloomy arch, at the base of which a pale and phosphorescent light seemed to play upon the heaving sea.
This light brightened and sunk alternately. Now it would shoot downward with a lurid glare, steadily and brilliantly, under the flying vapor, and then it died away with an opal tint.
Sheet lightning, of a pale and ghastly green, extending over ten or twelve points of the horizon, flashed and played upon it. Then we heard the rush of rain, as if a great lake had been falling from a vast height into the sea, and next the roar of the mighty blast; while furrowing up the ocean in its passage, the tempest came swooping down upon us and around us, in a species of whirlwind.