om the stern was splashing 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 hands on my straining
eyes. When I opened them, I saw the gunner's gaunt and 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's burning the
blue light now?" "A wiser man than I 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
have read of, certainly, but never expected to see, a pale, greenish,
glow-worm colored flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass
shade over the swinging lamp in the gun-room. 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
soap suds bubble blown from a tobacco-pipe, before it is shaken into
the air; at the core it was comparatively bright, but faded into a
halo. It shed a baleful and ominous light on the surrounding objects;
the group of sailors on the forecastle looked like spectres, and they
shrunk together, and whispered when it began to roll slowly along the
spar where the boatswain was sitting at my feet. At this instant
something slid down the stay, and a cold clammy hand passed around my
neck. I was within an ace of losing my hold and tumbling
overboard.--"Heaven have mercy on me what's that?" "It's that
sky-larking son of a gun, Jem Sparkle's monkey, sir. You Jem, you'll
never rest till that brute is made shark's bait of." But Jacko
vanished up the stay again, chuckling and grinning in the ghastly
radiance, as if he had been 'the spirit of the Lamp.' The light was
still there, but a cloud of mist, like a burst of vapor from a steam
boiler, came down upon the gale and flew past, when it disappeared. I
followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it
appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight
to leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were
taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely
into the night. I was not certain.--"A sail, broad on the lee bow."
The captain answered from the quarter-deck--"Thank you, Mr. Cringle.
How shall we steer?" "Keep her away a couple of points, si