‘I see her, sir,’ answered the captain; and in a few moments the palpitating fiery mass upon the sea slided a little away from the bow. I was sailor enough to understand that our ship had been steered for the burning vessel, but that Captain Ladmore, now perceiving that assistance was close at hand, had resumed his course. Every five minutes of sailing was rendering that picture of fire more splendid and awful. She seemed a large ship, three-masted like our own. Great columns of smoke rose from her, and into these sooty volumes the flames would leap out of the burning hold, turning them crimson to a great height, and the smoke hung like a thunder-cloud over the sea where the ship lay burning; it eclipsed the stars, and it reverberated in lightning-like flashes the darting of the red flames; and so exactly did these flames resemble lightning that I heard some of the passengers, who believed the cloud of smoke to be an electric storm, express surprise that no thunder was to be heard.
But the sublimity of the scene lay chiefly in the effect of contrast. In one part of the ocean was the silver reflection of the moon, with the bright, serene orb poised high and small over her own wake; the dark waters streamed into that brilliant reflection which trembled with the racing of the silver lines; and in another part of the ocean lay the great flaming ship, with her masts and yards all on fire, and showing as though they were painted upon the darkness in flames; and a little distance from her hung the shadow of a large vessel, whose canvas stole out in spaces of dim red, and then darkened again as the flames soared and sank; and behind and over the mastheads of the two vessels floated a huge dark body of smoke, which came and went to the eye with its sudden sullen colouring as from lightning; and the whole picture was made awful by its suggestions of terror and of destruction.
It was a scene to hold the most thoughtless mute and to detain the most wandering eye. But whilst I stood gazing two figures drew near; as they approached I could hear they were arguing.
‘You can never persuade me,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that the Americans have humour in the true meaning of the word, and there is but one meaning. They are funny, but they are not humorous. Their fun is either purely verbal or ridiculous exaggeration.’
‘What humourist have we ever produced,’ exclaimed Mr. Clack, ‘who can compare with ——’ and he named a funny American writer.
Mr. Wedmold’s silence was expressive of disgust.
‘Or take Holmes,’ said Mr. Clack.
‘Holmes’s humour is entirely English,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘by mentioning Holmes you strengthen my argument.’
‘What do you mean by verbal humour?’ said Mr. Clack.
‘The Yankee gets his grins out of odd words, some few of which still survive in our kitchens,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘or he gets his grins out of exaggerating or understating a situation. He will tell you, for instance, that, two men falling out, one threw the other over Niagara Falls, and the fellow got wet. The Yankee will look for a loud laugh at got wet; but there is no humour in it. A Yankee in telling a story will wind up by saying “So I said you git, and he got.” The laugh must come in here, for this “git” and “got” is the point of the story. But this sort of thing—and American humour is all this sort of thing—is by no means humour, and very little indeed of it is even fun. One page of Elia is worth the productions of the whole of the American humourists put together, from the date of Bunker’s Hill down to the latest effort of ——,’ and he again mentioned the name of a funny American writer.