“No—he has always maintained the greatest reserve respecting himself. Has he gone below?”
“Yes! who can he be? It’s strange I feel such an interest in him.”
“Poor child!—he has seen better days, and this hard life is killing him. I wish he could distinguish himself some how—the skipper might then take a fancy to him and put him on the quarter-deck.”
“What a dear little middy he would make,” said Westbrook, his gay humor flashing out through his sadness, “why we havn’t got a cocked-hat aboard that wouldn’t bury him up like an extinguisher, or a dirk to spare which isn’t longer than his whole body.”
“Shame, Jack—its not a matter for jest—the lad is dying by inches.”
“Ah! you’re right, Parker; I wish to heaven the boy had a berth aft here. But now I must go below, for I’m confoundedly sleepy. You’ll have a lighter watch of it than I had. The moon will be up directly—and there, by Jove! she comes—look how gloriously her disc slides up behind that wave. But this is no time for poetry, for I’m as drowsy as if I was about to sleep, like the old fellow in the Arabian story, for a matter of a hundred years or more, or even like the seven sleepers of Christendom, who fell into a doze some centuries back, and will come to life again the Lord knows when,” and with a long yawn, my mercurial messmate gave a parting glance at the rising luminary, and went below.
The spectacle to which Westbrook had called my attention was indeed a glorious one. The night had been somewhat misty, so that the stars were obscured, or but faintly visible here and there; while the light breeze that scarcely ruffled the sea, or sighed above a whisper in the rigging, had given an air of profound repose to the scene. When I first stept on deck the whole horizon was buried in this partial obscurity, and the view around, excepting in the vicinity of the Fire-Fly, was lost in misty indistinctness. A few moments, however, had changed the aspect of the whole scene. When I relieved the watch the eastern horizon was shrouded in a veil of dark, thick vapors—for the mists had collected there in denser masses than any where else—while a single star, through a rent in the midst of that weird-like canopy, shone calmly upon the scene: but now the fog had lifted up like a curtain from the seaboard in that quarter, and a long greenish streak of light, stretching along for several points, and against which the dark waves undulated in bold relief, betokened the approach of the moon. Even as Westbrook spoke, the upper edge of her disc slid up above the watery horizon, disappearing and appearing again as the surges rose and fell against it, until gradually the huge globe lifted its whole vast volume above the seaboard, and while the edge of the dark canopy above shone as if lined with pearl, a flood of glorious light, flickering and dancing upon the billows, was poured in a long line of molten silver across the sea toward us, bathing hull, and spars, and sails in liquid radiance, and seeming to transpose us in a moment into a fairy land. Such a scene of unrivalled beauty I had never beheld. The contrast betwixt the dark vapors hanging over the moon, and the dazzling brilliancy of her wake below was indeed magnificent. I looked in mute delight. The few stars above were at once obscured by the brighter glories of the moon. Suddenly, however, as I gazed, a dark speck appeared upon the surface of the moon, and in another instant the tall masts and exquisite tracery of a ship could be seen, in bold relief against her disc, the fine dark lines of the hamper seeming like the thinnest cobwebs crossing a burnished shield of silver. So plainly was the vessel seen that her minutest spars were perceptible as she rose and fell gallantly on the long heavy swell.
“Ah! my fine fellow,” I exclaimed, “we have you there. Had it not been for yonder pretty mistress of the night you would have passed us unseen. Make all sail at once—and bear up a few points more so as to get the weather gauge of the stranger.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“How gallantly the old schooner eats into the wind,” I said, gazing with admiration on our light little craft. I turned to the chase. “Has the stranger altered her course?” I asked, looking for her in the old position, but finding she was no more visible.