CHAPTER III.—The Quenching of the Torch.
“Then rose from sea to sky, the wild farewell.”
BYRON, DON JUAN, II. 409
The evening was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a gale from the westward, and the weather had become so thick and boisterous, that the lieutenant of the watch had ordered the look-out at the mast-head down on deck. The man, on his way down, had gone into the maintop to bring away some things he had placed there in going aloft, and was in the act of leaving it, when he sung out,—“A sail on the weather-bow.”
“What does she look like?”
“Can’t rightly say, sir; she is in the middle of the thick weather to windward.”
“Stay where you are a little.—Jenkins, jump forward, and see what you can make of her from the foreyard.”
Whilst the topman was obeying his instructions, the look-out again hailed “She is a ship, sir, close-hauled on the same tack——the weather clears, and I can see her now.”
The wind, ever since noon, had been blowing in heavy squalls, with appalling lulls between them. One of these gusts had been so violent as to bury in the sea the lee-guns in the waist, although the brig had nothing set but her close-reefed main-topsail, and reefed foresail. It was now spending, its fury, and she was beginning to roll heavily, when, with a suddenness almost incredible to one unacquainted with these latitudes, the veil of mist that had hung to windward the whole day was rent and drawn aside, and the red and level rays of the setting sun flashed at once, through a long arch of glowing clouds, on the black hull and tall spars of his Britannic Majesty’s sloop, Torch. And, true enough, we were not the only spectators of this gloomy splendour; for, right in the wake of the moon-like sun, now half sunk in the sea, at the distance of a mile or more, lay a long warlike-looking craft, apparently a frigate or heavy corvette, rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the sea, with her masts, yards, and the scanty sail she had set, in strong relief against the glorious horizon.
Jenkins now hailed from the foreyard—“The strange sail is bearing up, sir.”