ment on shore
between the Dutch troops and the natives of some of those islands. They
now and then are fond of making a disturbance," said Barlow, the second
mate.

"No, no; there was no chance of anything of the sort," answered Van
Graoul. "That firing, if firing it is, comes from the sea, I tell you."

The evening was now approaching, and still the mystery was not solved.
At distant intervals, we continued to hear the sound of firing; but when
darkness came on, we could nowhere see the flashes of the guns, as we
expected. A light breeze at length sprung up from the eastward; but it
was still hot and oppressive, and it in no way refreshed us. Anxious to
discover, if possible, the cause of the firing, we trimmed sails and
stood to the southward; but with the light air there was blowing we made
but little way. The night appeared very long. I turned in for a couple
of hours, but the heat soon again drove me on deck. When daylight
appeared, we were on the look-out, almost expecting to see some of the
vessels which had been engaged the previous day; but as the sun arose
there was nothing in sight but the deep blue silent sea on three sides,
and to the south the lofty hills of a large island, and at one end the
peaks of a mountain towering over the rest. There was, instead of the
bright, pure, clear atmosphere which generally exists at that hour, a
very peculiar lurid glare, which, as the sun rolled upwards in his
course, increased in intensity, till the sky became of almost a copper
hue. Fairburn had gone aloft with his glass, to satisfy himself more
fully as to there being anything in sight from the point where the
firing had proceeded. He now returned on deck.

"I cannot make it out," he remarked. "After all, I am not so certain
that it was firing we heard. Away to the southward, there is a dense
black cloud which seems rising rapidly, as if it would cover all the
sky."

We looked in the direction he indicated; and there, even while he was
speaking, we observed the approach of a cloud, or rather I should call
it a dense mist, so completely without break of any sort did it occupy
the whole horizon. It looked like an opaque mass of some substance,
borne onward by some invisible power towards us. Van Graoul, whose
equanimity nothing extraordinary could disturb, likened it to the wall
of China painted black, and taking a cruise to the southward.

"Is there any wind in it, do you think?" asked Fairburn. "It