“Your health, Mr Bang.”
Aaron sprung from his seat, and made his salaam, and the Dragonflies bundled out of the cabin again.
“I say, Transom, John Canoeing still—always some frolic in the wind.”
We, the Water Sprites, had shifted and rigged, and were all mustered aft on the poop, enjoying the little air there was, as it fanned gently, and waiting for the announcement of supper. It was a pitch-dark night, neither moon nor stars. The murky clouds seemed to have settled down on the mastheads, shrouding every object in the thickest gloom.
“Ready with the gun forward there, Mr Catwell?” said Yerk.
“All ready, sir.”
“Fire!”
Pent up as we were in a narrow channel, walled in on each side with towering precipitous rocks, the explosion, multiplied by the echoes into a whole broadside, was tremendous, and absolutely deafening.
The cold, grey, threatening rocks, and the large overhanging twisted branches of the trees, and the clear black water, and the white Moro in the distance, glanced for an instant, and then all was again veiled in utter darkness, and down came a rattling shower of sand and stones from the cliffs, and of rotten branches, and heavy dew from the trees, sparkling in the water like a shower of diamonds; and the birds of the air screamed, and, frightened from their nests and perches in crevices, and on the boughs of the trees, took flight with a strong rushing noise, that put one in mind of the rising of the fallen angels from the infernal council in Paradise Lost; and the cattle on the mountain-side lowed, and the fish, large and small, like darts and arrows of fire, sparkled up from the black abyss of waters, and swam in haloes of flame round the ship in every direction, as if they had been the ghosts of a shipwrecked crew, haunting the scene of their destruction; and the guanas and large lizards which had been shaken from the trees, skimmed and struggled on the surface in glances of fire, like evil spirits watching to seize them as their prey. At length the screaming and shrieking of the birds, and clang of their the cattle, ceased; and the startled fish oozy caverns at the bottom of the sea, disappeared; and all was again black and undistinguishable, the deathlike silence being only broken by the hoarse murmuring of the distant surf.
“Magnificent!” burst from the Captain. “Messenger, send Mr Portfire here.” The gunpowder functionary, he of the flannel cartridge, appeared. “Gunner, send one of your mates into the maintop, and let him bum a blue light.”