Ha! what is that? Right ahead, on a line with our bowsprit, there leapt from the black breast of the sea, on the very edge of the ocean, if not past it, a body of flame, brilliant as sunshine but of the hue of pale blood. It came and went, but whilst it lived it made a ghastly and terrifying daylight of the heavens and the water in the north, revealing the line of the horizon as though the sun’s upper limb were on a level with it till the circle of the sea could have been followed to either quarter.
‘That was not lightning,’ cried Miss Laura in a voice of alarm.
‘Finn,’ I shouted, ‘did you see that?’
‘Ay, sir,’ he cried with an accent of astonishment from the opposite side of the deck.
‘What in the name of thunder was it, think you?’ I inquired.
‘Looked to me like a cloud of fire dropped clean out of the sky, sir,’ he answered.
‘No, no,’ exclaimed the hoarse voice of the fellow who grasped the helm, ‘my eye was on it, capt’n. It rose up.’
‘Listen,’ cried I, ‘if any report follows it.’
But we could hear no sound save the distant muttering of thunder astern.
‘It looked as though a ship had blown up,’ said Miss Laura.