Chapter Twenty.
The Flash of Lightning.
Snowball began to snore almost as soon as he had closed his eyelids, and as if the shutting of his eyes had either occasioned or strengthened the current of breath through his nostrils.
And such a sound as the snore of the Coromantee was rarely heard upon the ocean,—except in the “spouting” of a whale or the “blowing” of a porpoise.
It did not wake the little Lalee. She had become accustomed to the snoring of Snowball,—which, instead of being a disturber, acted rather as a lullaby to her rest.
It was only after both had been asleep for many hours after midnight,—in fact when Lalee was herself sleeping less soundly, and when a snore, more prolonged and prodigious than any that had preceded it, came swelling through the nostrils of the sea-cook,—it was only then that the young girl was awakened.
Becoming aware of what had awakened her, she would have gone to sleep again; but just as she was about re-composing herself upon her sail-cloth couch, a sight came before her eyes that caused her not only to remain awake, but filled her with a feeling of indescribable awe.
On the instant of opening her eyes, the sky, hitherto dark, had become suddenly illumined by lightning,—not in streaks or flashes, but as if a sheet of fire had been spread for an instant over the whole canopy of the heavens.