"Let fall, and sheet home."
"Good morning, Ethel," said Morley, tapping on her cabin-door; "we are fairly clear of the creek and its crocodiles, and under weigh for the Isle of France."
It was, indeed, a glorious morning. Under a cloud of canvas, even to her royals and angular sky-sails, the Scottish ship took the lead, and her giant shadow fell far across the ocean.
Red, round, and flashing in his effulgence, up came the god of day, and the tall reedy cane-brakes and solemn drooping palm groves of the shore they were leaving, the sea ahead and the deck beneath their feet, were all red as if aflame. Ruddy gold, edged and gilt every rope, face, and object, the shadows of the two ships falling in purple on the crimson flush, which gradually melted away, as the sun rose upward, and lit all the far horizon of the Indian Sea.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ANCHOR IS LET GO.
Our story is now drawing to a close, but no sudden or striking tableau, no tremendous dénouement or poetical rhapsody will attend the fall of the curtain, albeit that truth is stranger than fiction.
The ships sailed in company. They were seldom far apart, and often were so near that those on board could hail each other and converse.
The weather was fine, the trade-wind steady, and the remainder of the voyage proved alike pleasant and prosperous.
Of the Isle of Bourbon they saw only the smoke of its volcano, rising into the clear air of a calm morning, and by sunset of the following day, the colours displayed from the gaff-peak of the Duke of Rothesay, which was ten miles ahead, and the discharge of one of her twelve-pounders to windward, announced that the Isle of France was in sight although not visible from the main-top of the Hermione; but the report of the gun sent a thrill through the hearts of all on board.