Shoals of porpoises plunged across the bows of the brig in the sapphire-colored sea, and when it was smooth a whole fleet of the little nautilus passed us with purple sails up; nor were the dark and gliding shark and the silvery flying-fish wanting at times to keep my attention excited; and the tiny petrels, as they came tripping along, half in water and half in air; kept pace with the Eugenie, as she cracked on under a press of sail, dashing the waves around her, ploughing so freely and so fearlessly the deep waters that hide a finny world, and wash the dark and unknown basements of the earth.
One glorious morning, when we were within a few days' sail of Hispaniola, there occurred a circumstance which was afterwards a source of the deepest regret to us all; how and why, will be shown during the progress of my story.
The day was fine, even for that region of fine days. The Eugenie was running smoothly before the wind, and Hislop, with considerable animation, was detailing to the captain and me the appearance of that rare phenomenon, a lunar rainbow, which by singular good fortune he had once seen in these latitudes, and which Aristotle declares is never seen but at the time of the full moon,—a declaration which our learned Scotch mate treated with contempt; for he was a strange fellow, this Marc Hislop, and could with equal facility dilate on the Apology of Plato, and the method of club-hauling a square-rigged vessel, or sheering her to her anchor in a gale of wind; on the Prometheus of Æschylus, or the proper mode of lying too in a hurricane, with every thing struck aloft, and topsail yards on the cap; and now, on the subject of the lunar rainbow, he was proceeding to quote from the Portuguese Pilot of Ramusio, when Weston interrupted him by hailing aloft.
"Fore-top—there!"
"Aye, aye, sir," was the usual response from Ned Carlton, a seaman who was perched in the top.
"What are you about?" asked Weston, angrily.
"Greasing the sling of the fore-yard, sir."
"Oh—I thought you were making hay, you are so slow about it. You have been staring ahead for the last twenty minutes at least."
"Because I think I see something," said the seaman, annoyed by the nautical taunt.
"Something," reiterated Weston, "what is it? a church, or a windmill going before the wind?"