HARRY CAVENDISH.
———
BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR,” “THE REEFER OF ’76,” ETC.
———
THE DOOM OF THE DART.
The day had been close and sultry, but, as sunset drew on, a light breeze sprung up, which diffused a delicious coolness throughout the ship, imparting new vigor to the panting and almost exhausted men. Invigorated by the welcome wind, a group of us gathered on the weather quarter to behold the sun go down; and those who have never seen such a spectacle at sea can have no idea of the vastness with which it fills the mind. Slowly the broad disc wheeled down toward the west, seeming to dilate as it approached the horizon, and, as its lower edge touched the distant seaboard, trailing a long line of golden light across the undulating surface of the deep. At this instant the scene was magnificent. Pile on pile of clouds, assuming every fantastic shape, and varying from red to purple and from purple to gold, lay heaped around the setting god. For a few moments the billows could be seen rising and falling against the broad disc of the descending luminary: while, with a slow and scarcely perceptible motion, he gradually slid beneath the horizon. Insensibly the brilliant hues of the clouds died away, changing from gorgeous crimson, through almost every gradation of color, until at length a faint apple-green invested the whole western sky, slowly fading into a deep azure, as it approached the zenith.
“Beautiful!” exclaimed the skipper, “one might almost become poetical in gazing on such a scene.”
The sun had now been hid for some minutes, and the apple-green of the sky was rapidly becoming colder and more indistinct, though the edge of a solitary dark cloud, hanging a few degrees above the horizon, was yet tipped with a faint crimson. Meantime the stars began to appear in the opposite firmament, one after another twinkling into sight, as if by magic, until the whole eastern heaven was gemmed with them. I looked around the horizon. Never before had its immensity so forcibly impressed me. The vast concave swelling high up above me and gradually rounding away toward the distant seaboard, seemed almost of illimitable extent; and when, over all the mighty space of ocean included within its circuit, my eye rested on not a solitary sail, I experienced a sensation of loneliness such as no pen can describe. And when the breeze again died away, leaving the sails idly flapping to and fro as the schooner rocked on the swell, my imagination suggested that perhaps it might be our doom, as it had been that of others, to lie for days, nay weeks and months, powerless in the midst of that desert latitude, shut out from the world, enclosed within the blue walls of that gigantic prison: and I shuddered, as well I might, at the very idea of such a fate.
It was now a dead calm. No perceptible agitation could be discovered on the surface of the deep, except the long undulating swell which never subsides, and which can be compared to nothing but the heavy breathing of some gigantic monster when lulled to repose. Now and then, however, a tiny ripple, occasioned by the gambols of some equally tiny inhabitant of the deep, would twinkle sharp in the starlight; while, close under the shadow of our hull, a keen eye might detect hundreds of the fairy fire-flies of the ocean, their phosphoric lanterns glittering gaily as they shot to and fro. Absorbed in the contemplation of the spectacle, I suffered more than half an hour to pass unheeded; and it was not until the sea began to be sensibly agitated, and the wind to freshen, that I looked up. The change which had come over the firmament astonished me, and requires a passing description.
When I had last looked at the heavens, the whole eastern sky was thick sown with stars, though no moon had as yet appeared. Along the western seaboard still stretched the long line of pale apple-green which the setting sun had painted in that quarter. The firmament overhead was without a cloud, its dark azure surface spangled with stars. Between the zenith and the eastern horizon hung the dark cloud which I have already mentioned, a black opaque mass of vapor apparently not larger than a capstan head. But every thing now presented a different aspect. The first thing that met my eye was the upper portion of the disc of the moon, peeping above the eastern seaboard, the dark fiery red of its face betraying the existence of a thin mist in that direction. Fascinated by the sight, I remained gazing for more than a minute on the rising luminary, as she emerged gracefully and majestically from her watery bed. At length, and apparently with an accelerated motion, she slid suddenly above the line of the horizon, pouring a line of silver light along the crests of the undulating swell, while instantaneously, as if putting on all her glory, she emerged from the mist that had surrounded her, and rolled on in pearly brightness, calm and undimmed, the stars fading before her approach. One planet alone remained visible—it was the evening star, walking in almost equal beauty, a little to the right of her sister luminary. Never before had those fine lines of Milton, in which he pictures her as leading on the choral hosts of heaven, rose so vividly before my imagination.