Mrs. Ashton was at the piano, accompanying Mr. St. Aubyn to a song, which he sang so affectedly that some of the hands forward mimicked him, and the forecastle seemed full of guinea-pigs.
Her husband popped his head over the skylight and called to her to come and view the sunset. Up she came, escorted by Mr. Holland and the actor, flounced showily into a chair, and fell into a rapture.
“Oh, how beautiful! The sea looks like gold! doesn’t it, Captain Steel? See how red the sails are! Ah, if I could only paint! what fame such a picture as this would bring me.”
True; but then what manner of pigments was needful to reproduce the glory, the colour, the calm, the infinity of that wonderful scene!
The sun was sinking down a cloudless horizon, and was now a vast crimson ball, throbbing and quivering with his lower limb upon the sea-line. There was something overwhelming in the unspeakable majesty of his unattended descent. As the huge crimson body appeared to hang for some moments above the sea before dipping, even Mrs. Ashton held her tongue, and seemed impressed with the tremendous spectacle of loneliness submitted by the globe of fire sinking away from the sky with the vast solitude of the deep in the foreground. Far into the measureless ocean he had sunk a cone of fire, while the heights above and around him were dim with burning haze. The sails of the “Meteor” were yellow in the expiring light; her topmasts seemed veined with lines of flame; and the brass-work about her decks reflected innumerable suns, each with threads of glory about it, that blinded the eyes to encounter.
But even while they gazed the sun vanished, and darkness came with long strides across the deep, kindling the stars and transforming the masts and yards of the ship into phantom tracery as delicate as frostwork to look at.
“Upon my word!” exclaimed Mr. Holland in a tone of rapture, “that’s as fine a sight as I must hope to see anywhere.”
“If you could introduce a scene like that, Mr. St. Aubyn, on the stage, eh?” laughed the General.
“Why, as to that,” replied Mr. St. Aubyn, “let me tell you, General, that there are some very fine scenes to be found in the large theatres in London. In the second act of ‘Pizarro,’ as I saw it the other night at Drury Lane, there’s a scene representing the Temple of the Sun; the sun is setting—and God knows how they managed it, but the sun did sink, not like yonder one, but very finely in clouds, just as ‘Ataliba’ exclaims, drawing his sword, ‘Now, my brethren, my sons, my friends, I know your valour. Should ill success assail us.’”...