“Ich sehe!” drawled out a native of the German Confederacy; and then followed a volley of voices,—each saying something to confirm the belief that a light was really gleaming over the ocean.
This was a fact that nobody—not even the first objectors—any longer doubted.
It is true that the light seen appeared only a mere sparkle, feebly glimmering against the sky, and might have been mistaken for a star. But it was just in that part of the heavens where a star could not at that time have been seen,—on the western horizon, still slightly reddened by the rays of the declining sun.
The men who speculated upon its appearance,—rude as they were in a moral sense,—were not so intellectually stupid as to mistake for a star that speck of yellowish hue, struggling to reveal itself against the almost kindred colour of the occidental sky.
“It isn’t a star,—that’s certain,” confidently declared one of their number; “and if it be a light aboard ship, it’s no binnacle-lamp, I say. Bah! who’d call that a binnacle glim, or a lamp of any kind? If’t be a ship’s light at all, it’s the glare o’ the galley-fire,—where the cook’s makin’ coffee for all hands.”
The superb picture of comfort thus called forth was too much for the temper of the starving men, to whom the idea was addressed; and a wild cry of exultation responded to the speech.
A galley; a galley-fire; a cook; coffee for all hands; lobscouse; plum-duff; sea-pies; even the much-despised pea-soup and salt junk, had been long looked upon as things belonging to another world,—pleasures of the past, never more to be indulged in!
Now that the gleam of a galley-fire—as they believed the light to be—rose up before their eyes, the spirits of all became suddenly electrified by the wildest imaginings; and the contest so lately carried on,—as well as the combatants engaged in it,—was instantaneously forgotten; while the thoughts, and eager glances, of every individual on the raft were now directed towards that all-absorbing speck,—still gleaming but obscurely against the reddish background of the sun-stained horizon.
As they continued to gaze, the tiny spark seemed to increase, not only in size, but intensity; and, before many minutes had elapsed, it proclaimed itself no longer a mere spark, but a blaze of light, with its own luminous halo around it. The gradual chastening of colour in the western sky, along with the increased darkness of the atmosphere around it, would account for this change in the appearance of the light. So reasoned the spectators,—now more than ever convinced that what they saw was the glare of a galley-fire.