"I say, Donovan, that can't be the band on board the frigate?" said Lanyard, who now joined us. His senior laughed outright. "Band—band—why, they might give you a regular rumpti tumpti, Dick—but such a piece of sacred music as that was, is altogether out of their line—besides, it was vocal, man—it was vocal."
The weather astern of us was as yet perfectly clear, but gradually the thickest of the pitchy curtain lifted from the horizon on our weather beam, suddenly disclosing the cold, blue star-light sky—which, gradually brightening, with a greenish radiance, gave token that the moon was not far below the horizon, against which the tossings of the dark waves were seen distinctly.
"Hillo!—who have we here?" said I, as the black sails and lofty spars of a large vessel, diminished by distance into a child's toy, were hove up out of the darkness into the clear, in strong relief against the increasing light of the lovely background, rolling slowly on the bosom of the dark swell, and then disappearing, as if she had slid down the watery mountain into the abyss whereout she had emerged. Presently the object appeared again; and this time, by the aid of my glass, I made out a stately vessel, gracefully rising and falling on the ever-heaving waters.
Anon, the bright planet, the halo round whose forehead had already lit up the clearing east, emerged, all pure and fresh, from the dark sea, and floated on the horizon like a crystal globe, shedding a long stream of trembling light on the sparkling and tumbling waves. Mr Peak at this instant called out from forward——
"The commodore is showing lights, sir."
"Very well—what are they?"
It was the night signal for a strange sail in the north-east.
"Answer it—but mind you keep the lanterns under the lee of the sail, so that our friend to windward may not see them."
It was done—and I again looked in the direction where we had seen the stranger, but she had suddenly become invisible—the dazzling of the dancing moonbeams on the water preventing our seeing her.
"She must be right in the wake of the moon, sir," quoth Mr Marline; "I cannot make her out now at all."