Suddenly I felt so collected and comfortable, as to be quite alive to the
loveliness of the scene. It was a beautiful moonlight night; such a
night as is nowhere to be seen without the Tropics, and not often within
them. There was just breeze enough to set the sail to sleep, although
not so strong as to prevent their giving a low murmuring flap now and
then, when the corvette rolled a little heavier than usual on the long
swell. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, not even a stray
shred of thin fleecy gauzelike vapour, to mark the direction of the upper
current of the air, by its course across the moon's disk, which was now
at the full, and about half--way up her track in the liquid heavens.
The small twinkling lights from millions of lesser stars, in that part of
the firmament where she hung, round as a silver pot--lid shield I mean,
were swamped in the flood of greenish--white radiance shed by her, and it
was only a few of the first magnitude, with a planet here and there, that
were visible to the naked eye, in the neighbourhood of her crystal bright
globe; but the clear depth, and dark translucent purity of the profound,
when the eye tried to pierce into it at the zenith, where the stars once
more shone and sparkled thick and brightly, beyond the merging influence
of the pale cold orb, no man can describe now----one could, once--but
rest his soul, he is dead and then to look forth far into the night,
across the dark ridge of many a heaving swell of living water--but,
"Thomas Cringle, ahoy where the devil are you cruising to" So, to come
back to my story.
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