d prevent some of
their comrades from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they were
all bound_"--I say, I was reading this passage, not a little affected by
the impiety of the rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman might
very well have sat, when I was terrified by an extraordinary loud
explosion, that burst so near and rang with such a prodigious clear note
of thunder through the schooner that I vow to God I believed the
gunpowder below had blown up. And in this suspicion I honestly supposed
myself right for a moment, for on running into the cabin I was dazzled
by a crimson flame that clothed the whole interior with a wondrous gush
of fire; but this being instantly followed by such another clap as the
former, I understood a thunderstorm had broken over the schooner.

It was exactly overhead, and that accounted for the violence of the
crashes, which were indeed so extreme that they sounded rather like the
splitting of enormous bodies of ice close to, than the flight of
electric bolts. The hatch lay open; I ran on deck, but scarce had passed
my head through the companion when down came a storm of hail, every
stone as big as a pigeon's egg, and in all my time I never heard a more
hellish clamour. There was not a breath of air. The hail fell in
straight lines, which the fierce near lightning flashed up into the
appearance of giant harp strings, on which the black hand of the night
was playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat in the shelter of the
companion, very anxious and alarmed, for there was powder enough in the
hold to blow the ship into atoms; and the lightning played so
continuously and piercingly that it was like a hundred darts of fire,
violet, crimson, and sun-coloured, in the grasp of spirits who thrust at
the sea, all over its face, with swift movement of the arms, as though
searching for the schooner to spear her.

The hailstorm ceased as suddenly as it had burst. I stepped on to the
deck, and 'twas like treading on shingle. There was not the least motion
in the air, and the stagnation gave an almost supernatural character to
the thunder and lightning. The ocean was lighted up to its furthest
visible confines by the flames in the sky, and the repeated explosions
of thunder exceeded the roaring of the ordnance of a dozen squadrons in
hot fight. The ice-coast in the east, and the two score bergs in the
north and west leapt out of one hue into another; and were my days in
this world to exceed thos