I had been half
an hour there, the weather was getting worse, the rain was beating in my
face, and the spray from the stem was flashing over me, as it roared
through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters. I turned my back to the
weather for a moment, to press my hand on my strained eyes. When I opened
them again, I saw the gunner's gaunt high--featured visage thrust
anxiously forward; his profile looked as if rubbed over with phosphorus,
and his whole person as if we had been playing at snap--dragon. "What has
come over you, Mr Kennedy?--who is burning the bluelight now?"
"A wiser man than I am must tell you that; look forward, Mr Cringle--look
there; what do your books say to that?"
I looked forth, and saw, at the extreme end of the jib--boom, what I had
read of, certainly, but never expected to see, a pale, greenish, glowworm
coloured flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass shade over the
swinging lamp in the gunroom. It drew out and flattened as the vessel
pitched and rose again, and as she sheered about, it wavered round the
point that seemed to attract it, like a soapsud bubble blown from a tobacco
pipe before it is shaken into the air; at the core it was comparatively
bright, but gradually faded into a halo. It shed a baleful and ominous
light on the surrounding objects; the cup of sailors on the forecastle
looked like spectres, and they shrunk together, and whispered when it began
to roll slowly along the spar towards where the boatswain was sitting at my
feet.
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