By the time the sun began to glow upon the edge of the sea, looking like a great argand lamp in the fog; overhead the billows of mist were rolling in imitation of the long, swinging swell of the sea itself. At first those billows in the sky glowed in purple, and rose hues, ever changing, magnificently beautiful! It was a seascape long to be remembered.
The sun rose higher. Its rays shot through the rolling mist like arrows. Now and then the breeze breathed on our sails and the Gullwing forged ahead at a better pace. The fog left us. We were sailing in an open space, it seemed, with the mist bank encircling us at a distance on a few cable-lengths, and the billows still rolling high above the points of our masts.
And then, to the westward, the curtains rolled back as it seemed for the scene that had been set for us. Like the stage of a great theatre, this setting of cloud and mist and heaving sea appeared, and there, sailing with her keel in the clouds, and her tapering masts and shaking sails pointing seaward, was a beautiful, misty, four-stick schooner.
“What do you know about that?” demanded Thankful Polk. “Do you see what I see, Sharp, or have I ‘got ’em?’ That ship’s upside down.”
“It’s a mirage,” I murmured.
“It’s a Jim Hickey of a sight, whatever the right name of it is,” he rejoined.
Everybody else on deck was aware of the mirage, and a chorus of exclamations arose from the watch.
“It’s the Gullwing herself!” ejaculated Bob Promise. “Of course it is! It’s a four-sticker.”
“How do you make that out?” demanded Thank. “I know derned well I ain’t standing on my head, whatever you be.”
“It’s her reflection, sawney!” said somebody else.